The idea of universally accessible electricity and safe public infrastructure – in the likes of roads – has become widely regarded as basic and expected in the west. However, in Nigeria, blackouts and unsuitable roads have become regular encounters. It is now ranked as amongst the bottom 20 nations via the Global Peace Index; crime rates have reached some of the highest levels in the … Continue reading Nigeria’s Reliance on Oil
Over the past ten years, the world has witnessed the staggering growth of China from a developing nation to the worlds second largest economy by GDP. One of its most notable projects is its infamous Belt and Road initiative. This has led China to become the biggest creditor in the world, larger today than the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World bank, driving billions of dollars of … Continue reading The holes in the road – has China’s Belt and Road initiative been too ambitious?
Central Asia (made up of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) has historically been a dominant player on the world’s economic stage. Its role as the heart of the legendary Silk Road (the main land corridor between Europe and Asia) and the USSR’s mining powerhouse in the 20th century rightfully earned these countries the nickname ‘the Snow Leopards’. However, the USSR’s collapse in 1991 has left the region at risk of … Continue reading The Lost Snow Leopards: Seven Steps to Rejuvenate Central Asian Economies
The world’s population surpassed 8 billion in November 2022. India and China are currently the two most populous countries, with 1.408 billion and 1.412 billion citizens, respectively. In April 2023, India is expected to overtake China to become the most populated country in the world. This rapid population growth will, no doubt, have numerous impacts on India and the rest of the world, but will … Continue reading India’s rapid population rise: A blessing or a curse?
Recent decades have seen an unprecedented amount of economic development as ’emerging nations’ have sought to raise incomes per capita and reduce levels of absolute poverty. Their economies have grown, and citizens have experienced an improvement in their overall standard of living. Developing countries share some characteristics such as lower growth, lower standards of living, worse education, and lower life-spans, when compared to developed countries. Many … Continue reading Tourism and Development: the path less travelled
In the 1950s, the American economist and statistician Simon Kuznets, as a result of his work on economic growth and income distribution, developed the Kuznets curve: a model which posits that as an economy develops, inequality first increases and then decreases. It was first proposed in a 1955 seminal paper. This hypothesis is expressed on a graph of inequality plotted against income (or GDP) per … Continue reading An Investigation Into the Kuznets Curve
The last 40 years have seen China’s GDP grow by a record 9.1% per annum, attracting a plethora of investors and businesses worldwide. With its newfound capital, it has gained international influence through trade and become the world’s largest trading partner in 2012. China seeks to optimize this trade network through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a scheme unveiled in 2013 by Chinese President … Continue reading The Dark Side of the Belt and Road Initiative
On the 13th of August, 1998, the stock, bond, and currency markets of a recently liberalised Russia collapsed. Confidence in the strength of the ruble and the Russian government plummeted. The stock market even closed for 35 minutes with stocks having lost 75% of their value since January of that year. 4 days later, Russia defaulted on their own state bonds and commercial banks declared … Continue reading Russia, 1998. What Went Wrong?
In 2021, remittances to low and middle-income countries are predicted to total $589 billion. December’s Chart of the Month explains why these remittances (money sent by migrant workers back to their country) are so crucial to developing nations. Life for migrants has been tough since the pandemic hit. Many have been stranded from families overseas or been vulnerable to COVID-19 as their jobs were commonly on the … Continue reading Chart of the Month – December 2021
The technological advances over the past twenty years have been fundamental in structuring the world we reside in today. Despite this, many economies have been left behind and have only recently begun to experience the full potential of technology and the digital economy. This is predominantly because much of the initial progression was concentrated in established economies and so nations that were underdeveloped and more … Continue reading How Technology has Affected Developing Nations
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