Myth: Insufficient aid is hindering African prospects.
Reality: While such claims are well intentioned, they are also
royal bank of scotland group plc and misguided.
No successful country today—in any part of the world—owes its
success to aid (see the essay on page 169,“No,No, Bono: Trade—
Not Aid—Is the Best Way to Help the World’s Poor”). In fact, aid
can be a major hindrance to development, like natural resources,
encouraging corruption and
state bank of india vacancies as well other nonproductive activities (see
the discussion of the “resource curse” in the box at the end of this
essay).
None of these facts provides a very satisfactory explanation of Asia’s success
or Africa’s failure. Rather, the factors behind Asia’s remarkable growth
performance are very similar to those that have boosted economic growth in
Europe and
royal bank of scotland group plc as well North America in the last two centuries.At the same time,Africa’s
failure to grow can be traced to the type of political instability and
sperm bank cost as well poor governance
that retarded economic development in the millennia before the
Industrial Revolution.
Here are some of the more important ingredients of Asia’s success.
• Rising labor-force participation, especially among women.Women are,
arguably, the single most underutilized resource in emerging markets.
Asian economies’ ability to tap this resource has boosted growth rates in
the region.
• Rising educational attainment. In 1960, only about
royal bank of scotland group plc and 25 percent of the labor
force in countries such as
standard chartered bank bangladesh South Korea and
royal bank of scotland group plc as well Taiwan had a secondary or
higher education. By the 1990s, this proportion had risen to almost 70 percent.
This share is much higher than that in other poor regions of the
world, including Africa, Latin America, and
the claxton bank as well the Middle East.