Zimbabwe Problems Of Underdev Essay Research Paper

Zimbabwe- Problems Of Underdev Essay, Research Paper

In the modern world it has become very common to classify countries in one of two categories: developed, and underdeveloped. One country, which is still considered to be underdeveloped, is Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe is located in southeastern Africa, and is bordered by five different countries leaving no access to the Indian coast. Zimbabwe does however have access to both the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers, which feed into the Indian Ocean, though neither is necessarily easily navigable by boat. There is an abundance of minerals in Zimbabwe, and also a respectable amount of commercial agriculture, however the economy has yet to progress to its full potential. This has much to do with the political turbulence that the country has experienced in the past thirty years, but is affected more so by the social inequality that has predominated for much of its history. Even with the social and political setbacks that Zimbabwe has been forced to face, the economy has done decently, but that has failed to alleviate many of the symptoms of underdevelopment that are still painfully apparent.

Underdevelopment may occur in various forms and have various causes, but the symptoms of underdevelopment are easily distinguishable. The most easily recognizable symptoms of underdevelopment are: problematic population growth, high birth and death rates, high infant mortality rates, and short life expectancies. Disease, famine, starvation, and malnutrition are also all red flags that hint to underdevelopment, as well as: low per-capita gross national product, overcrowded urban areas, poor overall health and sanitation, inefficient farming, and many other indicators. Zimbabwe still exhibits many of these symptoms in spite of the growing economy. Among those symptoms are: a short life expectancy rate; an average of 37.78 years for males and females, a high infant mortality rate; 62.25 deaths per 1,000 live births, an high unemployment rate; 50%, and an extremely high inflation rate; 59.9%. (www.odci.gov/cia/publications, 2000, p.3-7).

Anyway you look at it, Zimbabwe is still far from attaining the distinction of being a developed country, however there are many obvious causes this problem. Most importantly, Zimbabwe has been plagued by droughts, racial inequality, political mistakes, and devastating diseases. With an economy that is largely based on agriculture- it is estimated that 28% of their GDP is agriculturally based (www.odci.gov/cia/publications, 2000, p.6), and more than one half of the labor and one fourth of the formally employed are engaged directly in agriculture (www.brittanica.com, 2001, p.2)- the occurrence of a drought not only affects the food supply, but also impacts the already shaky economy.

In recent years Zimbabwe has been forced to face many droughts: throughout the 1980 s and again in 1992 (DeBlij & Muller, 2000, p.373) (www.brittanica.com, 2001, p.1), which drastically hurt the economy. These droughts also resulted in a large-scale social conflict stemming from the resulting land re-distribution in which land belonging to wealthy white commercial farmers was re-distributed to poorer black subsistence farmers. The economy took another blow recently when the government intervened in the civil war that has been raging in the nearby Democratic Republic of the Congo. This also hurt the people of Zimbabwe because it has already drained hundreds of millions of dollars from their already struggling economy.

Most importantly though Zimbabwe has been plagued by various diseases that have had a severe impact on life in this South African nation. Zimbabwe has the highest AIDS infection rate in the world (www.odci.gov/cia/publications, 2000, p.5), and has also suffered from Malaria, shistosomiasis, and tuberculosis. Beyond those seriously life threatening diseases, both pneumonia and measles have cited as major causes of death (www.brittanica.com, 2001, p.2). These diseases have had an immense impact on life in Zimbabwe; life expectancies have dropped significantly, already high infant mortality rates are on the rise, and the distribution of population by both gender and age has been greatly affected (www.odci.gov/cia/pulications, 2000, p.3).

These disastrous diseases have any number of causes, ranging from poor health care, low vaccination rates, less than ample hospital availability, bad nutrition, and very little AIDS education to simple poor sanitation. Whatever the cause, disease has played a major role in Zimbabwe s economic stagnation, social turmoil, and overall underdevelopment. Even though vaccination rates are on the rise for diphtheria, measles, polio, and tetanus (www.usaid.gov/countries/zw/zimb.txt, 1994), they are still not up to par, and could be greatly improved. Even more astonishing are the rates for access to potable water and adequate sanitation in rural areas, which are a far cry from those of the developed world (www.usaid.gov/countries/zw/zimb.txt, 1994).

These poor health conditions have had many repercussions in the development of the nation. With such a low life expectancy, the population distribution consists mainly of children and adolescents, who have yet to take complete advantage of Zimbabwe s relatively decent educational system, and therefore cannot take jobs in the service sector and other more advanced fields. This limits many people in the workforce to less