The Economic Crisis Reaches the Developing World

The World Bank estimates that the economic crisis will increase poverty in 2009 by 46 million people.

Recently, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank published reports on the rippling effects of the economic crisis throughout the developing world. To find these reports online go to: Impact of the Global Financial Crisis on Sub-Saharan Africa, IMF, 2009; or Swimming Against the Tide: How Developing Countries are Coping with the Global Crisis, World Bank, 2009.

Lack of aid funding and falling demand in advanced economies threatens years of progress in the developing world. In Zambia, we see layoffs across industry sectors. In most cases, these workers have no alternative source of income and no other marketable skills. The only option is to move into rural areas and begin subsistence farming.

Households sacrifice nutrition, health and education in order to survive. Children who are taken out of school rarely return. These children go on to raise more uneducated children, and the cycle continues. I’ve spoken with parents who are horrified and ashamed that they have been forced to send their children to live with distant relatives or friends because they could not buy enough food to feed their families.

The rippling effects of this economic crisis prove now more than ever that we are all interconnected. We can no longer simply focus on our own wellbeing, but instead we must think communally, nationally, globally. If we don’t, we run the risk of emerging from this crisis not stronger, having learned from our mistakes - rather weaker, with greater distance between the industrialized world and the developing world.

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