Development in Africa part 1

How developed is Africa?

In this blog I'm going to explore the human geography of Africa and its development. Development refers to the standard of living for the people in a country. This can be measured in several ways:

Wealth-

This is indicated using GDP, which is the total value of all of the goods and services produced in a country. GNP can also be used to determine wealth. It is the gross domestic product, plus the earnings from foreign investment, and can be divided by a country's population, to find the GNP per capita.

Jobs-

The types of jobs people do differ between countries. For example, in an economically developed country, Tertiary jobs, in areas such as retail, tourism, education, health and banking, will be more common and Quaternary jobs in the field of ICT and employment are also popular.

However, countries within Africa are more likely to work in primary jobs, involving the extraction of raw materials, and secondary jobs such as manufacturing, due to their low level of development.

Health-

This is another important factor to be considered within a country's development. It has numerous measures including: birth rate, infant mortality rate, death rate and life expectancy. In the UK, a developed country, the death rate is an age of 80, however in Afghanistan, one of the least developed countries in the world, the number is significantly lower with an age of 45, due to the poor hygiene and living conditions.

Education-

In developing countries, the level and standard of education is going to be lower than that in a developed one. This could be due to a weak government or poor population, but education is also a big contributor to wealth and employment. It can be measured from literacy rate, freedom of speech, the percentage of the population that has access to primary education and equal opportunities for women.

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