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Development in Africa part 2

How does development vary throughout Africa? 

 Using the website 'Dollar street' I was able to review development through Somalia, South Africa, Kenya and other African countries. The website allows you to view People’s homes, their family and how they live, which exposed just how serious development is and the extreme conditions people are forced to live in. Using my findings, I am going to review the development throughout Somalia and South Africa.


Somalia 

 Somalia is one of the poorest countries within sub-Saharan Africa, which is partially due to the civil war and political instability that have been detrimental to the country and its economy for decades.
Some of the damage the war inflicted was the population growth overtaking the economic growth. In 2018, the world bank estimated that it's GDP was $6.2 billion, making it an officially low-income country. Compared to south Africa, with a GDP of $368.3 billion, it is evident how low Somalia's GDP is. The country's economic strength was largely impacted by the conflict, killing 3,330 people in 2012.

Using the website, I visited the Idle family, who fled Mogadishu, as refugees. 
They live in a one roomed house, that they built themselves with the help from relatives, with poor quality materials.

  
The house has no electricity and can sometimes be shared with up to nine people at night. 
The Idle family have a monthly income of $35, which comes from Amina's street begging, and use 10% of this to buy food. They are helped out by neighbours and other people in their community but they are living in extreme poverty.  Searching for water can take around four hours a week for Amina.

However, there is still hope for Somalia. many precious minerals and gold lie beneath its surface and once extracted, can help to boost Somalia’s economy. 



South Africa
South Africa holds the second largest economy in Africa, after Nigeria, due to exportation of gold, platinum and other natural resources and its large stock exchange. It also has much advanced infrastructure, with its GDP almost tripling before 2011 at a peak of $400 billion. Much of South Africa is inhabited by wealthy residents, whose wages are growing at almost twice the rate of its lowest earners. However, even the richest of African cities are home to great numbers of people living in poverty. The unemployment rate has grown to 30% and since 2011, three million more South Africans have been pushed below the poverty line, and are living on less than $1.25 a day. Statistics have shown that a very minimal percentage of people in this position are white, Asian and Indian, the majority being black (and females are shown to be even worse affected in the poverty crisis). This shows just how massive the gap between the rich and the poor is, within South Africa.
Not only does this mean that almost half of south Africa's population is living to a lesser standard, but this also negatively impacts on high murder, rape, assaults and other violent crimes derived of inequality and poverty.

Despite this, south Africa has a higher literacy rate than most African countries, with 94.37% of its population being literate. It also shares a similar morality rate to that in the UK, with a difference of 0.2 deaths per thousand. Its sanitation is also improving from 83% in 2001, to 91% in 2011.




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