Democratic Republic Of Congo Essay

The Democratic Republic of the Congo has been struggling for decades with strife economic issues and underdevelopment in the country. I believe the underdevelopment of DRC is due to overreliance of aid in the country, with $2,599,240,000 USD of aid given in 2015 (The World Bank 2017). I begin the report by providing underdevelopment figures which compares different countries and sub-Saharan averages to prove how underdeveloped the DRC is, and explain the theory of both aid dependency and volatility. The notion that underdevelopment is caused by both aid dependency and aid volatility can be proven with abundant evidence. In this report, I examine how aid dependency and aid volatility hindered the DRC’s education sector in 1989, how the health

The DRC was under Belgian colonial rule until 1960, and in 1998, the country endured a five-year civil war. 6 million died, and disease and malnutrition became rapidly abundant. Additionally, the UN estimates that 2.3 million displaced persons and refugees live inside of the DRC (The World Bank 2017).

Underdevelopment is defined as “when a large share of the population cannot meet or experiences great difficulties in meeting basic material needs such as housing, food, water, health care, education, electricity, transport, communications and physical security” (Baker 2014, 6). Least developed countries, or LDCS, are what we call countries facing underdevelopment. Many figures illustrate the DRC’s underdevelopment. Their infant mortality rate is 74.5 deaths out of 1000 born, whereas the Sub-Saharan average is 56.3 of 1000 (Trading Economies 2017). Their literacy rate is 63%, compared to the Sub-Saharan Africa average of 62%, and the DRC is rated 176 out of 187 countries on the human development scale (The World Bank 2017). They also have a Gross National Income per capita of $420 USD, compared to the Sub Saharan Africa average of $1,631 (World Bank 2017). Given these figures, it is clear that the DRC lags behind Sub-Saharan Africa in many important categories, making it comparatively

Aid dependency is the idea that “recipient governments look outward for their development mainsprings rather than actually building the proper governance institutions at home needed for prosperity” (Baker 2014, 141). Moyo elaborates, saying, “because aid flows are viewed as permanent income, policymakers have no incentive to look for other, better ways of financing their country long-term” (Dead Aid, 2009, 66). Citizens are living off of aid in the DRC, so the government has not shown interest in investing in public services. The behavior of relying on outside funds instead of investing in infrastructure is resulting in long-term underdevelopment. While it may appear that development is happening because people are receiving services such as education, healthcare, and goods, development is not sustainable when aid is