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Poverty problems in developing countries
Poverty problems in developing countries
Problems of underdevelopment in africa
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Every day, about 25,000 children die. (TED) Every year, nearly 9,000,000 children under the age of 5 die. (WHO) And around 70% of those deaths are due to conditions that could easily be prevented with proper food, water, and medical resources. (WHO) Many countries like Africa lack the resources to properly provide food, water, and health care for their citizens. In spite of media and propaganda encouraging international citizens to provide donations to help their cause, I believe the challenge must be resolved by local citizens in order for it to be truly resolved. So even though the media is encouraging us to, wealthy nations should stop giving monetary aid to Africa, as they will not become independent by receiving charity and the aid is being put into the wrong places.
For one thing, when we give money to poorer nations, we take away their ingenuity. “If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, if you teach a man to fish; you feed him for a lifetime.” -Chinese Proverb. If you give people money, sure you may help them for a bit, but if you present to them new ways to make wealth for themselves, they will be better off in the end. And although Africa does have some weaknesses, it is also bursting with potential. So the challenge that Africa struggles with should not be a challenge of reducing the amount of impoverished; it should be a challenge of creating skills and frameworks for people to pull themselves out of poverty. If you say that Africans are poor and they need to reduce the amount of poverty, you get international donors with money for the poor, medicine for the sick, and food for the hungry. However, that is counterproductive, because you are treating the symptoms and not the problems. If you were to send a p...
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Glennie, Jonathan. "Giving Aid to Poor Countries Is Hardly a Great Act of Generosity." Theguardian.com. Guardian News and Media, 14 June 2011. Web. 06 Mar. 2014.
Mwenda, Andrew. "Andrew Mwenda:Aid for Africa? No Thanks." Andrew Mwenda: Aid for Africa? No Thanks. TED Conferences, LLC, 2007. Web. 06 Mar. 2014.
Ntale, Charles Lwanga, and The Opinions Expressed in This Commentary Are Solely Those of Charles Lwanga Ntale. "Where Does Aid Money Really Go -- and What Is It Spent On?" CNN. Cable News Network, 01 Jan. 1970. Web. 06 Mar. 2014.
Pasquali, Valentina, and Denise Bedell. "The World's Richest and Poorest Countries | Global Finance." The World's Richest and Poorest Countries | Global Finance. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Mar. 2014.
Shah, Anup. "Foreign Aid for Development Assistance." - Global Issues. N.p., 8 Apr. 2012. Web. 05 Mar. 2014.
Every year, more and more money is donated to Africa to promote democracy in order to get rid of the powerful coups in many countries through out the continent. While the coups are declining and democratic governments are being established, the economic growth and development of Africa is not anywhere it should be considering the abundant natural resources and coastline that the continent possesses. Even though countries, like the United States of America, donate millions of dollars they are a large reason why Africa is underdeveloped economically. The Trans-Atlantic Slave trade is the most devastating event in the history of the world. Nearly 14,000,000 men, women, and children were displaced, sold into slavery, and killed by the trade routes.(
How much money is one morally obligated to give to relief overseas? Many In people would say that although it is a good thing to do, one is not obligated to give anything. Other people would say that if a person has more than he needs, then he should donate a portion of what he has. Peter Singer, however, proposes a radically different view. His essay, “Famine, Affluence, and Morality,” focuses on the Bengal crisis in 1971 and claims that one is morally obligated to give as much as possible. His thesis supports the idea that “We ought to give until we reach the level of marginal utility – that is, the level at which, by giving more, I would cause as much suffering to myself or my dependents as I would relieve by my gift” (399). He says that one's obligation to give to people in need half-way around the world is just as strong as the obligation to give to one's neighbor in need. Even more than that, he says that one should keep giving until, by giving more, you would be in a worse position than the people one means to help. Singer's claim is so different than people's typical idea of morality that is it is easy to quickly dismiss it as being absurd. Saying that one should provide monetary relief to the point that you are in as bad a position as those receiving your aid seems to go against common sense. However, when the evidence he presents is considered, it is impossible not to wonder if he might be right.
... aid across the world. As we have established that we do have an obligation to redistribute globally in a cosmopolitan perspective, distributing wealth however we may need to rethink what the best assistance is. Amaryta Sen conveys that before sending aid to the third world state, we would need to fully understand the limitation of freedom in the country. Redistributing wealth to global countries requires it to be evaluated by the economic shortage that they are suffering and to see whether it will be efficient in the long run. The more effective ways to contribute would be to international relief agencies or NGO’s that would pursue international development projects to help those in poverty or the alternative option by Tom Campbell’s idea of a ‘Global humanitarian levy’ which suggests a more appropriate taxation on all citizens to collectively aid those in need.
In response to the recent failure of the international community to prevent the famine crisis in the Horn of Africa since July 2011, Suzanne Dvorak the chief executive of Save the Children wrote that, “We need to provide help now. But we cannot forget that these children are wasting away in a disaster that we could - and should - have prevented” she added, “The UN estimates that every $1 spent in prevention saves $7 in emergency spending.” (Dvorak, 2011).
Thousands of books and essays about poverty, causes and possible fixes have been written for others to gain an understanding and pocket a little bit of knowledge so this can soon be fixed. There are millions of organizations in today’s world that beg for money, clothes, and food so they can be sent overseas to help a poor child in Uganda or Haiti. Helping nationwide is always a good thing to be a part of; however, there are many things that can be done in each person’s community, which is always a great place to start.
The United States is one of the leading suppliers of Foreign Aid in the world, and even though the US gives billions, European countries give aid money to the same countries, this causes many areas of the Middle East, Africa, and Asia to be almost fully dependent on foreign aid. This means that without aid from other countries, they would not be able to support themselves at all. Foreign aid is meant to help countries that are struggling with civil unrest, disease, or natural disasters, it is not meant to help keep the country out of debt, but that is where more and more of the US and The EU’s foreign aid budget is going. The question is, does all this money actually go where it is intended? It should be going towards the government and to help the people, but in many cases, the countries government does not have the resources to properly track the flow of money. The countries in most cases have poor infrastructure and corrupt or oppressive leaders, not always at a national level, but in the towns and cities. So this means there is almost no way to oversee the flow of foreign aid through the country, all we can see is that their situations aren't getting any better and the countries are still impoverished. If this is the case, where are the millions of dollars going? Countries like Afghanistan and Iraq receive the most money from American foreign aid and European aid, yet they are still under oppressive governmental rule and there is still an extreme difference between the rich and poor. Garrett Harding’s theory of “Lifeboat Ethics” exemplifies how not giving aid to others will allow the strongest of society to thrive, while teaching the impoverished to help themselves. He believes that giving aid to poor countries will only make ...
...aid is inefficient and prodigal as most foreign aid program fund are paid into the irresponsible government, the mismanagement of fund and embezzlement makes the aid program become wasteful (BBC). However, this objection is not convincing because nothing is perfect, the politicians are kept on working hard to make aid program become more efficient as there are regular reports have been produced on whether the foreign aid program are carried out effectively, and, therefore imposes pressure on those government decision makers. (BBC)
Problems began for Africa when there was the “scramble for Africa. Africa was extremely divided throughout the continent. There was no nation intact. Even though they were divided into colonies, they still had no sovereignty. Since they had no form of nationalism it made it impossible to succeed as a nation. This really hurt Africa economically. If they would have been able to come together as a nation they could have pulled all of their assets together and exploit them in order to make money. By not doing this it allowed the government to exploit the people. This is why there are starving people in Africa on television. The states of Africa were created in order to make money by exporting all the various resources, whether it was slaves, minerals, or agriculture. There was much to gain by owning a chunk of land in Africa. This reason being because Africa is so rich in their resources for trade. After the race was over it left Africa severely divided.
African governments have given in to the whim’s of international organisations such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) in social and health policies, and with this, has come a shift away from former emphasis on social justice and equitable market efficiency to public health services for all now being perceived as a major threat ...
Poverty has conquered nations around the world, striking the populations down through disease and starvation. Small children with sunken eyes are displayed on national television to remind those sitting in warm, luxiourious houses that living conditions are less than tolerable around the world. Though it is easy to empathize for the poor, it is sometimes harder to reach into our pocketbooks and support them. No one desires people to suffer, but do wealthy nations have a moral obligation to aid poor nations who are unable to help themselves? Garrett Hardin in, "Lifeboat Ethics: The Case Against Helping The Poor," uses a lifeboat analogy to expose the global negative consequences that could accompany the support of poor nations. Hardin stresses problems including population increase and environmental overuse as downfalls that are necessary to consider for the survival of wealthy nations. In contrast, Peter Singer's piece, "Rich and Poor," remarks on the large differences between living conditions of those in absolute poverty with the wealthy, concluding that the rich nations possess a moral obligation to the poor that surpasses the risks involved. Theodore Sumberg's book, "Foreign Aid As Moral Obligation," documents religious and political views that encourage foreign aid. Kevin M. Morrison and David Weiner, a research analyst and senior fellow respectively at the Overseas Development Council, note the positive impact of foreign aid to America, a wealthy nation. Following the examination of these texts, it seems that not only do we have a moral obligation to the poor, but aiding poor nations is in the best interest of wealthy nations.
Riley, Geoff. "Poverty & Inequality in Resource Allocation." Poverty & Inequality in Resource Allocation. Tutor2u, 23 Sept. 2012. Web. 06 May 2014.
Nearly 50,000 people, including 30,000 children, die each day due to poverty-related problems and preventable disease in underdeveloped Countries. That doesn’t include the other millions of people who are infected with AIDS and other incurable diseases. Especially those living in Sub-Saharan Africa (70%), or “the Third-World,” and while we fight to finish our homework, children in Africa fight to survive without food, or clean water. During the next few paragraphs I will give proof that poverty and disease are the two greatest challenges facing under developed countries.
In most cases, shortage of money is not the sole problem. Rather, poverty is a mere term summarised by a sophisticated factors of corruption, lack of infrastructure, civil unrest, government failure, and many more. Especially, donated money are regularly spent to run campaigns, provide wages to staffs, and to run the charities, with a very few of the amount being invested directly to help the poor. This socio-political scepticism can be worse as some believe that charity is merely a band aid fix to the deeper underlying problem that is continuously causing the poverty, and it only becomes the basis for local communities to be dependent on
Growth in Africa is not enough for its people to grow, which is leading to poverty and hunger in Africa. Today Africa is one of the leading countries having poverty and economic problems. One half of the Africans live below the poverty line which leads to low human development in Africa. The main cause of poverty in Africa is a problem in its economic system and environmental factors. Because of poverty people of Africa remain hungry as they don’t have enough money to buy their food and their basic needs. Some of the African countries have less poverty rate than others due to good government and economic system in those countries. Most of the African is facing challenges to survive and keep their family healthy.
Through individual, national, and global aid, we can take steps to decrease the overwhelming amount of poverty in less-developed countries and even in our own lands.