It is quite saddening to note that it has taken the efforts of the UN and the developed world for the Third World leaders to grasp the fact that their populace need to be free from abject poverty and hunger, gender disparities, environmental degradation, child mortalities, HIV/AIDS, malaria and other maladies. In a span of just over half a century since taking on reigns from their colonial fathers, many developing nations’ leaders have plunged their countries into social and economic woes leaving them in shambles and tatters worse than they were during Colonialism.
Even as many from these socially and economically challenged nations sometimes misguidedly albeit reasonably pour vitriol on their former colonizers’ efforts to help them develop, a lot has been left undone by the Third World nations themselves with respect to self-inspired growth. This conundrum is aptly evidenced by the poverty malaise, which the growth prospects of the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) have been ceaselessly marred in. Instead of engaging their colonists in a tirade to the effect that their melees emanate from the colonial, neo-colonial and slave trade pogroms, the developing world should strive to disentangle themselves from their own mess. The jeremiad against the developed world being true in its entirety in as far as resource exploitation and psychosocial degradation is concerned, justifies not the callous acts of corruption, resource mismanagement and abysmal leadership that has been left to fester in many of the economically budding nations.
Many leaders in the embryonic parts of the globe lack legerdemain in handling the thin-skinned policy issues in their countries as witnessed in the case of Robert Mugabe who unceremoniously evicted non-indigenous farmers from Zimbabwe in a 'well intentioned' yet directionless tussle over land with ruinous socio-economic consequences. In their illegal pursuit of extreme power and wealth, such African leaders not only disregard the welfare of their citizens but also condemn their nations to perpetual and downright poverty and end up emerging as pitiful portraitures of what has now been derogatorily labeled by Africa’s misanthropists as “black African barbarity and savagery” at its best in sacrificing their brothers.
The reality that Africa forms the bane of the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) shows that something must have gone terribly wrong somewhere along the development trail if the enormity of resource endowment in the continent is anything to go by. Deplorable leadership and discordant policies have been pointed at as the possible causes of the pitiable economic performance.
These have thus aggravated major social and economic crises such as poverty and HIV/AIDS. To effectively combat these calamities developing countries should elect good leaders to power and formulate home grown policies in line with their development aspirations.
In this respect, the recent resolution by the Angolan government to abolish prescriptive policy measures from the Bretton Woods institutions and come up with their own formulations for which they would later seek International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) concession is commendable. Hopefully, such steps would steer the country and its ilk away from the hopeless poverty and low standards of living, which have been their hallmark for long.
A July 12th, 2005 United Nations account titled, “Hoping and Coping, The Capacity Challenge of HIV/AIDS in Least Developed Countries”, issued by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Office of the High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States (OHRLLS) indicates that the effect of HIV/AIDS infections on the economies of the Least Developing Countries has magnanimously disoriented their growth and development.
With the majority of those infected and affected by these ignominies being women, the food security situation in these states is under threat since women form the cornerstone of food production through agricultural toil. Coupled with the low access to education, health services and development facilities, the plight of Third World women is thus wanting.
Influence peddling and political patronage have also been grave problems more or so with regard to funding of women organizations in these countries. One of the Community Based Organizations (CBOs) I consulted for was once barred from receiving a grant by the local facilitators for allegedly “submitting their proposal late” despite presenting it nearly seven months before the approved date. These amongst many other salient issues have to be decisively addressed by the developing countries themselves if they are to make any significant steps in improving their lot.
While it is true that the Third World cannot go it alone in their quest to better themselves, the wanton begging bowl culture that many of their leaders have titillated for years should be condemned. In their relentless and escapist bafflegab of blaming the developed world for their socio-economic ills while at the same time perpetually pleading for massive quantities of donor ‘aid’, they have failed to earnestly gauge the fact that they could be the very reasons for the preservation of the status quo in their nations.
The main thing that Africa and the rest of the developing world need in their development prospects is the good will of the developed international community. This also entails the absence of negative interference and economic sabotage.
Yet still, genuine complaints such as those to do with inequitable trade practices barring the entry of developing nations’ products into the developed world as fought against by among others, the Jamaican UN Ambassador Stafford Neil, are warranted. Ambassador Neil, Chairman of the 132 stout Group of 77 (G-77) that forms the bulk of the 191 UN membership, is justified in his calls for a fair deal for the developing world at the world trade amphitheatre.
His croons for the conception of changes in the developed world’s foreign trade policy through abolition of the heinous over ‘protectionism’ could not have come at a better time being hot on the heels of international trade negotiations in Cancun and Doha. It is hoped that such changes will give the poverty-stricken sections of the earth greater and fairer latitude in global trade and economic development.
Thus, the developing world should never let their historic past influence their prospective development agenda. They can only do this by formulating and implementing policies that can drive them to better standards of living and socio-economic growth for which they thirst and drool. They should not engage in the frequently witnessed directionless verbiage of buck passing and excuse digging.
The UN Millennium Development goals should not become their only yardstick to work hard and spur economic growth. Let them play their part in developing their nations rather than waiting for the developed world to subjectively and prescriptively show them the way forward. The developed world should only be there to answer for them the questions of how and not those of why and when.
Therefore, they should strive to overcome such malignant bottlenecks as resource mismanagement, the greasing of corrupt palms through bribery, influence peddling and political patronage, nepotism, cronyism, gender discrimination and violence, ethnicity, among other ills by electing good, transparent and accountable leadership. It would indeed be saddening to find that even after the 2015 target of the Millennium Development Goals, the Third World still wobbles in the murk and mire of social and economic mediocrity that has previously formed the high water mark of their progress agenda.
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