'The Bottom Billion: Why the poorest countries are failing and what can be done about it by Paul Collier Oxford University Press (2007)\r'

'â€Å"I gift a lilliputian boy who is six. I do non motive him to grow up in a foundation with a vast running sore- a gazillion mass stuck in desperate conditions a massiveside precious prosperity. ” (176. Paul pitman). It is a globular nightm atomic number 18 and â€Å"a ghetto of misery and discontent” ( collier) that would affect, not only Africa, only the world in general, â€Å"unless” the G8 (a group of 8 industrialise countries) and mass of informed ordinary citizens act tall(prenominal) and responsibly to garter these countries overcome the poverty golf hole they run through been stuck in for decades; enable them to converge with the counterweight of the world and pass a delegacy up to the 21st s this instant standards.\r\nPaul coal miner is a professor of economic science and Director of the touch for the Study of African Economies at Oxford University, and former director of Development Research at the World Bank. In 2010, he was named by outside polity Magazine to its list of top ball-shaped thinkers. coal miner holds a distinction a fightf ard from Oxford University. Among his books The plunder Planet print in May 2010, Wars, Guns, and Votes publish in March 2009, and the Bottom Billion published in 2007.\r\nIn the â€Å"Bottom Billion: why the deplorableest countries argon run lowing and what can be do somewhat it” Collier seeks to call back out occurrenceors that argon causing genius million of people to live in entire poverty and have futile life. In the mean plot of ground he wants to shift the persuasion of the industrialized countries from â€Å"alleviating [their] poverty” to â€Å"economic convergence”.\r\nCollier approaches his arguments through an empirical studies where he analyses statistically the coefficient of correlation between accompanimentors he considers to be responsible to wanton away out the sad reality which angiotensin converting enzyme jillion of people live in †the â€Å"fourteenth century [characteristics of]: accomplished war, plague, ignorance. ” He uses data from University of Michigan, his accept optionfulnesss and experiences as an Africa expert, and his colleagues’ visions. Collier gradually argues that in that location be four traps which ar responsible to trap rat billion countries and federal agency them at the rump of the global economic system.\r\n barely Collier does also include responses that are undeniable to be taken seriously and responsibly by both the G8 and the hind end billion authorities officials for any(prenominal) change to happen and to save the world from â€Å" noctambulation into unnecessary catastrophe” in the future. What is the â€Å"bottom billion”? According to Collier, they are fifty-eight small countries Characterized by courtly war, plague, and ignorance. Their race combined is fewer than china or India. Per capita income i s very low, so the income of the typical state is negligible, less than that of most of the rise up-off world cities.\r\nThey are countries that do not form a geographic label, so Collier label them as â€Å"Africa+” as 70% of the people of the bottom billion are in Africa. The + sign refers to places such as Haiti, Bolivia, the exchange Asian countries, Laos, Cambodia, Yemen, Burma, and North Korea. The average life apprehension is 50 yrs, the infant mortality is 14%, and parity of children with symptoms of long-term mal nutrition is 36%. The misfortune one billion still is living in extreme poverty in a country affected by recurrent meshs, resource curse, geographic isolation or bad governance. ) The conflict trap: agree to Collier, 73% of people in the societies of the bottom billion have recently been in civilized war or still in one. 50% of conflicts in the bottom billion are post conflict relapses. The low income, slow growth, and addiction upon principal(a ) commodity exports (oil, diamonds, or gold) are leading causes that increases the risk of civil war. Civil war destroys the economic of the society during war and post conflict war as collier calculates the average cost to be $ 64 billion. Examples of countries fail into conflicts are Cote d’Hivoir, Democratic Republic of the congou- erst Zaire, and sierra Leone.\r\nThe typical civil war finishing for a long time â€Å"something around a decade, more than 10 times as long as typical international war. ” (Collier). It is very hard to stop it, when it does, possibility for anformer(a) civil war, repeat civil war. Collier argues that political in goodice is not what makes the society prone to a civil war, as Zimbabwe faces the injustice of political rights but there is no war, no ascent civil war. Instead, Collier statistical analyses show that poverty, stagnation, and availability of valuable inherent resources are the causes that seem to produce civil war scree n of than political injustice. ) inwrought Resource Curse: Natural resource rich countries in Africa have stop up poor as a head of resource wealth that only the few (government officials and abroad extract agencies) to realize from but not the mass (the citizen). The elites in these countries detach themselves from the inte loosening and concerns of the bulk of their population; they give and steal the revenues of essential commodities exports. All these revenues go to private pockets or foreign banks. According to Collier, it is estimated to be 38% of Africa’s wealth has fled the continent.\r\nEconomists explain resource curse as a â€Å"Dutch illness”, because â€Å"the resource exports cause the country’s property to rise in value against other currencies. This make the country’s other export activities uncompetitive. ” Nigeria for employment in 1970s, its oil revenues built up. hitherto, the country’s other exports such as wild beans and cocoa became unprofitable. As Nigeria’s currency rise in value, the peanut and cocoa prices become higher for importers who might receive another peanut and cocoa provider cheaper from that of Nigeria. Therefore, Nigeria’s peanuts and Cocoa became unprofitable, and production rapidly collapsed.\r\nFailure to ray the export products, the resource rich countries can’t break free from the dependency of exporting the primary commodities as they are source of big revenues. The government accountability is not transparent for its citizens as the latter(prenominal) are not taxed by their governments. Consequently, the citizenry are less standardizedly to demand financial accountability. However, the inborn resource is good source of wealth for the full-length society when their governments have managed to use the resource wealth very well such as Canada, Norway, and Australia. ) inland countries with bad inhabits: Countries that lack coast governm ent note are forced to sell to their populate countries’ markets. Example of Uganda and Switzerland, both are landlocked but the first one is poor and the indorse one is rich (respectively). Collier explains that neighbor matters for development, he continues explaining the fact that Switzerland is a rich country, despite the fact is a landlocked, because it depends on its neighbors the Germany and Italian infrastructure. Whereas Uganda’s poor neighbors with their weak infrastructure make it hard for Uganda to approaching to the sea and integrate into global markets.\r\nKenyan’s infrastructure is so important to Uganda’s doorway to the sea. Moreover, sometimes the neighbors not only are the transference corridor, they are also the markets themselves, worry Germany, Italy, and France were the Switzerland market. While Uganda neighbors are Kenya, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Rwanda, and Tanzania. All of Uganda’s neighboring c ountries are poor, and have been through genocide like Rwanda, stagnation of nearly three decade like in Kenya, Somalia that is completely ollapsed, and Democratic Republic of the Congo that has catastrophic for it to change its name from Zaire. Therefore, Switzerland has been for a plosive consonant of three decades in the split neighborhood. While Uganda’s neighbors are economically poor countries with weak infrastructure, which is abruptly don’t form good neighbor for Uganda. â€Å"Landlocked countries with poor infrastructure connections to their neighbors have special(a) market for their goods. ” (Collier) 4- Bad Governance in a small country: bad policies resumeed by bad government can destroy the thrift of a country.\r\nThe type of democracy practiced in these countries is dysfunctional democracy lack the check and fit system. Thus, the government officials seize each opportunity they have to build up a fortune from the natural resource revenues th at are supposed to benefit the majority of the society not only the few in the government. The instability and lack of accountability oddly in these small countries of the bottom billion discourage potence investors, who usually feel split when opt for better known countries such as china and India than unfamiliar countries with instability and risks.\r\nChad is a landlocked country with advocate and oil. Chad’s only option is their government to endure public services from the caution and oil revenues. However, 2004 stack tracked money released by the ministry of Finance â€Å" mean” for rural health clinics. Survey showed that â€Å"only1% of it spended the clinics and 99% failed to reach its destination. ” In part 3 Chapter 6, Collier argues that globalization works for India and China but not the bottom billion that may have â€Å"missed the sauceboat”.\r\nGlobalization seem to work against the bottom billion, because of â€Å"economies of agg lomeration” as Asia utilize labor-intensive manufacturing strategy to break into the global markets and makes competitive for â€Å"later comers” to compete with their products that seem to control the international markets. Bottom billion, in turn, become supplier of primary commodities, which just reinforce the natural resource trap. In the final section, Collier suggests in portion the poorest, there is a need to â€Å"narrow the chump and broaden the instruments”.\r\nTo focus only on the one billion that live below poverty line and experience no type of growth compared to the rest of the world; and to shift thinking from help oneself to an ramble of policy instruments such as avail delivery, host intervention, charter and laws, and trade policy, which are the instruments he proposes to help the bottom billion escape from the traps mentioned above. 1- upkeep Policy: Aid causes intense political disagreements between the left-hand(a) and right. Left se es it as a part of solution they regard it to be as a reparations for colonialism, while the right sees it a part of problem when the inapt get rewarded.\r\nCollier believes that aid does â€Å"tend to travel up the growth process”. He reminds readers to the fact that United States was also that poor, and took it to get to where it is today about two hundred years. He believes in â€Å"aid for development” neither in â€Å"aid for reparations” nor â€Å"aid for the feckless”. However Collier insists to change the way the aid is provided, keeping in mind that statistical evidence generally suggests that aid is â€Å"subject to what is called â€Å" fall returns. ” When aid reaches about 16 percent of gross domestic product it is not anymore effective.\r\nIn addition aid can be an inducement to rebellion and to coups, it is sometimes called â€Å"rents to sovereignty”. So to make it more effective, there is a need to form agencies just to pull off the aid money and to make sure it reaches its potentials for which is given. Aid money needs to be watched more well-nigh so does not leak to armed forces expense or be taken by coups. 2- soldiery intervention: it is the most controversial one in the list of instruments; however, the bottom billion countries â€Å"cannot provide their own security system to an adequate fashion. That is the same strategy used 40 years ago, when North the States provided supplies security to Europe after World War II.\r\nCollier mentions the tragedy of Rowanda when 800,000 died unnecessary due to rejection of military intervention. Yet the British military intervention in Sierra Leone end brutal long lasting civil war. Both the Sierra Leone government officials and its citizens welcome the military action that helped them to be in peace from the rebellion that recruit addicted teenagers and train them to hack the hands and the feet of villagers including women and children. -Laws and Ch arters: giving the fact these countries are very invalidate and far from the transparent to adopt laws that will benefit their citizens, Collier suggests in this case a unpaid of international standards that would put twinge at bottom these societies to adopt them. Example of such law â€Å"the extract industry transparency” requires governments in the bottom billion to propound to its own citizens what revenues are getting from natural resource extraction. Nigeria eformers adopted it and a lot other governments have adopted it because of the pressure from below. It is that pressure on governments from within their own society that would lead some other governments to adopt them. 4- Trade Policies: also it is debated about especially the bottom billion countries are poor with nobody tolerance; however, Collier believes that initiation the west markets to bottom billion countries in much generous way, would dictatorial help their economy to succeed and to diversify to weakly manufactures and into a wide range of agricultural goods.\r\nAs matter of fact, would enable them to break free from their dependency on exporting that narrow range of primary commodities. â€Å"The west countries have done it in the past- when rich countries opened its markets to each other, or when North America opens its markets to Europe so the latter could recover. The whole novel wealth of Europe, America, and Japan grew through that process of opening and sharing markets”. Trading policy that Collier proposes in the bottom billion would help the rich countries to be safer and more prosperous.\r\nCollier, I think he achieves his goals of create a mass of informed citizens as he thinks that it is a step forward for changes to happen and for better future for the bottom billion countries. About 50,000 copies of the bottom billion book were sold in just few months by different age groups. Also, the in the buff paperback edition was being translated into Chinese , Japanese, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Korean, and Norwegian.\r\nPoliticians may find it hard to get away with the classic political gestures of â€Å"flying in, kissing couple of babies, announcing some sort of Aid program, and then forgetting about it. ” Now the well informed citizens are just a pressure on politicians’ decisions toward this part of the world. Collier also generates an dumfounding political interest that the bottom billion countries now are benefiting from and their economic growth is being recognise by leaders such as Ban-Ki Moon, the monument General of the Unite Nations inform â€Å"let 2008 be the Year of the Bottom Billion. Robert Zoellick, the president of the World Bank, announced in his first Annual Meeting orchestrate that â€Å"a stronger focus on the bottom billion would now be a priority”, Douglas Alexander, British Secretary of State for Development â€Å"announced the initiation of a massive international Growth Ce nter for the poorest countries…etc. Bottom Billion is a essential read book for whoever is interested\r\n'