Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
Why is Zambia so poor?
http://www.psmag.com/business-economics/zambia-poor-poverty-globalization-mining-corruption-66080/Before we get started, I should admit something: I have no idea how a country goes from being poor to being rich.
...
In America, getting from poverty to here meant crowded factories, tenement housing, belching smokestacks, diseases caused by human shit in the drinking water. In other places development was born out of devastation, revolution, authoritarianism—nothing we would ask other countries to emulate.
Zambia is poor—that much is clear as soon as you arrive. To get to Kitwe, a city of 500,000 people in the Copper Belt Province, you land at Ndola airport an hour away. “Airport” is putting it grandiosely. It’s a strip of runway next to a low building the size of an exurban Starbucks. You get off the plane, walk 100 feet across the tarmac, and wait under an awning until a tractor pulls up, towing a cart with your luggage. Everyone crowds in, grabbing their bags, and you do, too—it’s all over in about 45 seconds. At no point are you indoors. As you leave, you hear a European in a suit remark, “I wish they did it like this everywhere.”
...
Given what I just admitted, maybe it’s a bit weird that helping countries go from poor to rich is part of what I do for a living. But the more I do this, the less I’m sure of. Like Tolstoy’s unhappy family, every poor country is poor in its own way, and everyone I meet has a narrative, a creation myth, for how it got this way and why it remains so.
...
In America, getting from poverty to here meant crowded factories, tenement housing, belching smokestacks, diseases caused by human shit in the drinking water. In other places development was born out of devastation, revolution, authoritarianism—nothing we would ask other countries to emulate.
Zambia is poor—that much is clear as soon as you arrive. To get to Kitwe, a city of 500,000 people in the Copper Belt Province, you land at Ndola airport an hour away. “Airport” is putting it grandiosely. It’s a strip of runway next to a low building the size of an exurban Starbucks. You get off the plane, walk 100 feet across the tarmac, and wait under an awning until a tractor pulls up, towing a cart with your luggage. Everyone crowds in, grabbing their bags, and you do, too—it’s all over in about 45 seconds. At no point are you indoors. As you leave, you hear a European in a suit remark, “I wish they did it like this everywhere.”
...
Given what I just admitted, maybe it’s a bit weird that helping countries go from poor to rich is part of what I do for a living. But the more I do this, the less I’m sure of. Like Tolstoy’s unhappy family, every poor country is poor in its own way, and everyone I meet has a narrative, a creation myth, for how it got this way and why it remains so.
This is definitely worth the whole read and catalogs pretty much every frustration you face working in development.
3 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
