The Development Trap by Adam D. Kiš

Author:Adam D. Kiš [Kiš, Adam D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138574540
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2018-03-06T00:00:00+00:00

4

Confounders

Remember the glory days of Zimbabwe? Upon gaining independence from Great Britain in 1980, the nation of Zimbabwe boasted the third-highest GDP growth rate on the continent at 14.4 percent. In the next twenty years, its growth rate ranking slipped as the new nation established itself, yet the GDP rarely dipped into negative territory in the lead-up to 2000 (notably, in 1984, 1992, and 1999), and its relative standings within Africa climbed into the single digits several more times, notably in 1988 (eighth place, with a GDP growth rate of 7.6 percent), 1990 (eighth place, at 7.0 percent), and 1994 (seventh place, at 9.2 percent) (World Bank 2015). Zimbabwe’s farms were so successful that the nation not only produced enough to feed itself, but also began exporting grain to surrounding nations, earning itself the nickname ‘the breadbasket of Africa’. The country provided free education to its citizens and fairly good access to health care (Richardson 2005).

President Robert Mugabe was by no means without reproach, being accused of genocide and suppression of opposition parties, and Zimbabwe itself was certainly not a utopia for all of its citizens. Yet nothing quite turned Zimbabwe on its head as Mugabe’s ill-advised land reform act of 2000. In an apparently racially-motivated move, land belonging to white farmers was forcibly seized and redistributed to new black owners, many of whom were untrained and ill-equipped to operate commercial farms at their former levels (Richardson 2005). Productivity dropped drastically, and the nation plunged into a rapidly-accelerating downward economic spiral as international outcry led to sanctions and aid-blacklisting for Mugabe’s government. By 2002, the annual GDP growth rate had hit −8.9 percent, and the following year it nearly doubled to −17.0 percent. Annual GDP growth rates fluctuated a bit after that, but they never left negative territory for the period 2002 to 2008. At the end of that period, annual GDP growth sat at −17.7 percent (World Bank 2015).

Zimbabwe seems to be somewhat on the road to recovery; in 2009, the country posted the first positive GDP growth rate in years, and by 2010, its annual GDP growth rate of 11.4 percent put it back in third place in relative rankings within the continent. By 2011, it was in second place at 11.9 percent (one could argue that after falling so low, Zimbabwe’s growth rate had nowhere to go but up). But in 2012, it was back at 24th place with an annual GDP growth rate of 5.3 percent, and in 2013, it was in 46th place (eight places from the bottom out of 54 African states) at 1.8 percent (World Bank 2015). Clearly, Zimbabwe isn’t out of the woods yet.

Apart from GDP growth rates, the impact of Mugabe’s land reforms can be seen by other metrics, as well. By 2005, the purchasing power of Zimbabweans had declined to the level it stood at in 1953 (Clemens and Moss 2005). A 2008 CNN article reported that inflation in Zimbabwe had hit 11,200,000 percent in August of that year, up

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.