Poor countries may be defined according to their development and poverty levels. In most poor countries development is hampered by corruption and bad governance. A lot of the governments’ money is being embezzled by a few individuals and as result, they have to depend on aid and loans from the IMF, the World Bank, and other donors to run their economies. Since they still have to repay the loans granted, the poor nations reduce budgetary allocations to sectors like education, health and social services causing strain in these services.
Poor countries have weakness in competing with the developed countries in the global market and therefore they tend to become a target for the dumping of sub-standard goods. In addition, most poor countries rely on agriculture and since they are not endowed in technology, they tend to become net exporters of raw materials.
Most of the African communities hold their culture dear and tend to view modernization as means of abandoning their culture for the western culture. Development, also referred to as progress in a positive direction may at times have a negative implication on a given culture. For example, in Africa, the technological development brought with it the mobile phones, the computers and other modern technologies, that make it possible to connect people to other parts of the world. This has resulted in a lot of pornographic materials getting access to the African audience.
The African culture is very conservative and quite specific on what should be exposed to the public; and due to the perception that technology is disturbing morality, many nations have been a bit of reluctant to embracing technology for their benefit. This kind of negative attitude towards various types of technologies has made African not be exposed to the positive things being done in other countries aimed at alleviating hunger and poverty; and this has made Africa to be left behind in terms of development.
It’s there fore important that the poor countries improve their systems of governance so as to enhance effectiveness, do away with corruption ,embrace modern technology, reduce the overdependence on donor aid , encourage industrialization and integrate the development programs with their cultures in a harmonious way such that none of them gets compromised.
Robbins explains that there is no sense in which economic progress will be realized without a lot of adjustments; he goes ahead to explain that the ancient philosophies should be done away with, social institutions be integrated and that races, castes and creeds be done away with. Since only a few communities are ready and willing to do this, development has remained unrealized in several places.