Landlocked with bad neighbours: Thirty-eight per cent of the bottom billion are in landlocked countries.This closes off the possibility of building a more balanced democracy through a process of economic development. A low-income, resource rich society is likely to become an autocracy or lopsided democracy with no checks and balances, and is in turn unlikely to grow. The natural resource trap: Twenty-nine per cent of the bottom billion are countries in which resource wealth dominates the economy.Because they stay poor, stagnant and dependent on primary commodities, they are in turn more prone to wars and coups. Wars and coups keep low-income countries from growing, and dependent on primary commodity exports. Some of them are stuck in patterns of violent political conflict in the form of internal challenges to government. The conflict trap: Seventy-three per cent of people in these countries have recently been through civil war or are still in one.These countries are caught in one or another of the following traps, which have kept them stagnant: The central problem of these ‘bottom billion’ countries is that they have not grown – their growth rates has been negative in absolute terms, and in relative terms massively below the rest of the developing world. While 5 billion people live in countries that are developing, one billion people live in a small group of countries – concentrated in Africa and Central Asia but with a scattering elsewhere – that are stuck at the bottom. A new mix of policy instruments is required, supported by a bold new plan of action for the G8. Aid has been ineffective, and globalisation has made things worse.
These traps are not inescapable, but standard solutions will not work. These countries, and the billion people who live in them, are caught in one or another of four traps: the conflict trap the natural resources trap the trap of being landlocked with bad neighbours and the trap of bad governance in a small country.
This book argues the real challenge of development is the small group of countries that are falling behind and often falling apart.
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