African underdeveloment
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The document is a review of Abdirahman Ahmed's analysis of the article 'The Root Causes of African Underdevelopment' by Sambit Bhattacharyya, which explores the impact of malaria, slavery, and colonial institutions on Africa's development. The reviewer argues that malaria is an outcome rather than a cause of underdevelopment, emphasizing the importance of Africa's institutions. The review concludes with a call for further research into other potential causes of underdevelopment, including cultural factors.
African underdeveloment
- 1. Article review on The root cause of African underdevelopment Abdirahman Ahmed
- 2. The review would look like this: Introduction of the article Parts of the article My review and/or argument Empirical evidences Strength of the article Recommendation for Further studies
- 3. About the article The title of the article under review is Root causes of African Underdevelopment. This is a working paper published in Australian national University By Sambit Bhattacharyya, from School of Economics finance and marketing of Sussex,UK. It was published in 2007. Empirical article
- 4. Introduction The paper is contains five succinct and separate sections as follows: Introduction about the general hypothesis and theories pertaining to Africas underdevelopment. There are three main argument cited In the paper: The Disease hypothesis; The Slavery hypothesis and the Legacy of colonial institutions.
- 5. Methods The second section of the paper the author introduces the empirical model. The author used simple regression model. GDP: Dependent variable Malaria, total number of slaves exported and Colonia Institutions were taken as explanatory variables.
- 6. Cont log yi = 了 +留MALi +硫 INSi +粒 SLVXi +竜i where i y , MALi, INSi, and SLVXi are per capita income in country i, measure of malaria, measure of institutions, and measure of slave exports respectively. i 竜 is the random error term.
- 7. Results In the third section, the researcher presents his empirical results. The result of the paper shows that malaria matters the most and all other variables were statistically insignificant.
- 8. Discussion In section 4 the author present regression results showing strong negative conditional correlation between savings and malaria. The result shows that both mortality and morbidity, resulting from malaria, slows down the economic progress and capital accumulation. High incidence of malaria over time can large scale result persistence of poverty
- 9. Implications In the fifth and last section, the author concludes his analysis and point out implications or recommendations for African policy makers and planners.
- 10. My Review/Argument There is plenty of literature and theories about the topic. My argument is that malaria is not the cause of underdevelopment but a consequence of it. Africas institutions matters the most not the malaria.
- 11. The author uses in appropriate variables. The researcher could have focused on the root cause of Africas underdevelopment.
- 12. Empirical evidences The geographic hypothesis: environments and diseases are hurdles to development. But contradictions were found in hot areas of Singapore, Malaysia and Botswana. According to the authors result Egypt was found to have no malaria rate which depicts its development. But the recent situations contradict the findings. In 2011, 40% of its population lived less than 2$ per day.
- 13. Daron Acemoglu and John Robinson in their article Why Africa is poor (2010) has painstakingly explained that the geographic hypothesis of African under development have not so far withstood an empirical scrutiny.
- 14. Attempts to examine wither poor health outcomes are responsible for meager economic development found no significant impact on the economy, rather poor health outcome as a consequence of poor economic development (Acemoglu and Robinson 2007)
- 15. Other studies reviewed on the course of this article review suggest my argument that the extractive economic and political institutions are the cause of Africas underdevelopment (e g Greg Mills 2010; Awojabi and Oladayo 2014; Laust Jacobson 2014; Manuel Branco 2008; Acemoglu 2001, 2005; Acemoglu and Robinson; 2007, 2010, 2012)
- 16. Overall the author is putting the cart before the horse. Africas extractive political and economic institutions were and are responsible for the underdevelopment of Africa Malaria is a consequence of lack of interventions and response programs at macro or micro level.
- 17. Strength of the article Worthy to mention is the logical coherence of the research. The research perfectly watched a flawless methodology. In addition, the author agrees that the other factors such as the slave trade and institutions are also significant (though his analysis focused on malaria) in talking about African underdevelopment
- 18. Further studies Issue of African underdevelopment and the rationale behind it goes far beyond a single article, article review, books and/or thesis discussions. Other causes are thought to exist. Cultural hypothesis was not mentioned in the review. All these are area of interest for further researches.
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