Economic Development: Landlocked Traps and Aid Strategies

How Landlocked Countries Can Overcome Economic Traps

The most debilitating and difficult trap occurs when countries are landlocked, where geography plays an important role. Specifically, countries that aren't close to rivers or oceans, or don’t have proper, productive transportation, usually suffer the most. These countries must import and export to neighboring countries through infrastructure to the coast, as they rely on their neighbors for trade which results in economic growth.

However, there are several instruments that can help landlocked countries avoid these traps:

• Increase neighboring growth spillovers: This can be achieved through transport infrastructure improvements and by reducing regional trade barriers.
• Improve coastal access and rural development: These steps are essential to attract aid.
• Enhance digital and air connectivity: Improving telecommunication infrastructure, e-services, and air transportation can link neighbors for economic growth and create an investor-friendly environment.
• Encourage policy reforms and remittances: Supporting the improvement of neighbors’ economic policies as well as encouraging remittances may boost the country’s economy at high speed.

Planners vs. Searchers in Foreign Aid

There is a fundamental difference in how development is approached:

• Planners apply global blueprints, have only a general idea of poverty, and determine what to supply.
• Searchers adapt to local conditions, find out the reality at the bottom, and discover what is in demand.

Aid agencies, who know what the poor need, as weak as it seems, end up following the "big plans" of international institutions such as the IMF, World Bank, and various UN programs. These organizations mainly create "big plans" that sound ideal in order to rally donations from the rich and to satisfy the image that the wealthy are contributing to a better world through investment. However, there are no measures of accountability or ways to measure the success (or failure) of these "big plans," leading to a waste of resources that could otherwise improve the lives of the poor.

The author suggests an ideal tactic: strengthening Searchers' actions by taking the focus away from Planners. We should let community organizers and local agencies who understand the needs of the poor take the lead and receive funding. This ensures they do not merely showcase a "big plan" but actually deliver tangible results of aid activity, utilizing community members who understand the actual needs of their own people. Furthermore, with the help of effective strategies and precise methods utilized in one community, Searchers can easily carry over successful outcomes to other communities.