Why Poor Countries Are Poor

[jeffrey]

The clues lie on a bumpy road leading to the world's worst library.

Reason Magazine - Why Poor Countries Are Poor

[PrincessPerky]

interesting article....but if you are in a hurry..
When you're standing in the blazing sunlight of the Cameroonian dry season, it's hard to see at first what the problem is with a roof that looks like a giant open book. But that's only if you forget, as the architect apparently did, that Cameroon also has a rainy season. When it rains in Cameroon, it rains for five solid months. It rains so hard that even the most massive storm ditches quickly overflow. When that kind of rain meets a roof that is, essentially, a gutter that drains onto a flat-roofed entrance hall, you know it's time to laminate the books. The only reason the school's books still existed was that they'd never been near the new building; the librarian had refused repeated requests from the principal to transfer them from the old library.

Either the principal was so stupid that she did not realize water ruins books, or she did not care very much about the books and simply wanted to demonstrate that the library had some books in it. The second explanation seems more likely. With the money at her fingertips and nobody to object to the wastefulness of building a second library, the principal had full control over the project. She appointed a former pupil of the school to design the library, probably to demonstrate the quality of education provided by the school; she did prove a point, although perhaps not the one she intended. But no matter how incompetent the architect, the flaws in the design would have been spotted if anybody concerned had a strong interest in making sure the library functioned as a library. But that was never the prime concern of anybody with authority. The people in power simply cared about putting up something that could qualify the school as a university.

We still don't have a good word to describe what is missing in Cameroon and in poor countries across the world. But we are starting to understand what it is. Some people call it "social capital," or maybe "trust." Others call it "the rule of law," or "institutions." But these are just labels. The problem is that Cameroon, like other poor countries, is a topsy-turvy place where it's in most people's interest to take actions that directly or indirectly damage everyone else. The incentives to create wealth are turned on their heads like the roof of the school library.

[EverydayFinance]

If you have much more time, like days...I've read some incredible books on this. Here are a couple that I couldn't put down and that adequately describe the current state of things in my mind:

Guns, Germs and Steel

The Wealth and Poverty of Nations

Both incedible reads, a couple years old each.

[jamai]

'the average cameroonian is 50x poorer than the average american'
i wonder what they use to measure poverty, its a completely different lifestyle.