However, after four decades of aid receiving, poverty is still the biggest challenge in Africa. Data show that overall foreign aid has failed not only to promote economic growth but also to improve the lives of the people on the continent. As such, poverty has even worsened around the African continent. The World Bank (2008) reports that the number of poor in Africa has nearly doubled, increasing from 200 million in 1981 to 390 in 2005 despite massive foreign fund inflows. Furthermore, Dambisa Moyo (2009) in her much acclaimed book Dead Aid goes further by highlighting the failure of aid in Africa.
Countries in South Africa are known by many to be poverty stricken. Sierra Leone and Liberia are not outliers in this generalization. In recent years, the economic rates of Sierra Leone and Liberia have been significantly below the mean of the global economic growth rates. Although Sierra Leone exports a large quantity of diamonds and Liberia has a thriving agricultural market, at over seventy six percent, the West African countries’ populations must strive to stay afloat in the world’s economic system (CIA World Factbook). Sierra Leone is located in West Africa and is surrounded by countries with similarly low Growth Domestic Product rates.
In spite of many recent economical, political, and social achievements, Afghanistan is still ranked as the fourth poorest country in the world, according to the Afghanistan 2007 Human Development Report. One of two Afghans is classified as poor, with more than 20 percent of the rural population consuming less than the average daily calories. Historically, the drought of the nineties, the destruction of basic infrastructure, the damage to institutional organizations, and the scarcity of skilled professionals has been among the primary causes of poverty. Decades of war and foreign invasion has greatly impacted its political and social stance and essentially has destroyed its economy. Economic frailty and government dependence
So what is this reality of life called poverty? Poverty is defined by Merriam-Webster as the state of one who lacks a usual or socially acceptable amount of money or material possessions. When people hear of poverty, most people think of the people who don’t have anything; the last, the lost and the least. But contrary to what most people believe, there are actually two types of poverty. These are the income and non-income poverty.
In society today poverty is measured to ways either absolute poverty, or relative poverty. Lets start with Absolute poverty, Absolute poverty measures the number of people living below a certain income threshold or the number of households unable to afford certain basic goods and services like food water and shelter. This is the level of poverty you most likely picture when you hear the word poverty. Usually commercials of foreign children, with bloated bellies who suffer from malnutrition and lack of clean water. Absolut poverty is mostly prevalent in developing countries like India or Haiti, but the United States is not immune from it.
The damage in Canterbury is estimated at around $2billion. However Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the world, and does not implement the same building codes that saved so many lives and buildings in the Canterbury earthquake. Well constructed and earthquake proof buildings are a rarity in Haiti. An estimate suggests that 250,000 homes were destroyed or severely damaged in Haiti, leaving nearly 1 million people homeless. A clear indication of how little resources and building training the people of Haiti had is shown in even
In the new global economy, intangible assets have become increasingly important. These intangible assets are referred to as Intelligent Capital (IC). An important aspect of IC is called 'Human Capital' (HC) (Abhayawansa and Abeysekera, 2008). The term human capital refers to resources substantiated in people, which have the potential of generating or yielding income (Stevens, 1999). The concept of human capital theory is based on developing people by investing in them, with the aim of making them more useful and more valuable to the society (Fincher, 2007).
The continent of Africa has for many generations been regarded as the poorest continent in the world. Experts in the fields of economics, human rights, history and international politics have dedicated their entire academic lives to explaining the problems associated with poverty in Africa. General themes of drought and famine, poor infrastructure, disease, post-colonial civil wars and often corrupt governments are evident across the entire continent, and have been for the last sixty years. For the purpose of this paper, two of the most populous countries in Africa will be examined in more detail – Nigeria and Ethiopia. Although they are not the poorest of the African nations, both share the same socio-economic problems – high unemployment, inflation, inherent need for constant international aid and consequent sub-standard living conditions.
The success of any continent is largely dependent on its economic development (Suter 2006). It would seem that Africa, a continent rich in resources would be regarded as a very promising continent, much to the contrary, Africa has proved to be a continent showing very little potential. Its failure to thrive at a rapid rate could be attributed to a number of factors; one of which includes the failure of many African governments to handle their responsibilities both legal and political (Suter 2006). It is both the lack of democracy of many African governments and the existence of autocratic rulers , that have led to the downfall of these countries, as their intent was to increase their own wealth instead of acting in the interest of their country and people. These failed leaderships have often led to civil war, negatively impacting further on the economy of the country.
In this essay, the advantages of media concentration including media quality and enhance alternative media outlets will be discussed. It will also illustrate some disadvantages of concentrated media ownership in terms of increasing of product prices and power abuse. ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- The first significant benefit is that many concentration of media companies provide people with high media quality. Concentrated media industries are potential in terms of adequate financial resources for employing high performance staff members to improve the quality of production (Baker, 2014). In addition, Harcourt and Pichard (2009, p. 9) point out that media companies need to invest on facilities such as fibre optic cables, satellites and video on demand systems.