Barriers and strategies for development - Economics A Level Study Notes

Imagine you're trying to grow a beautiful garden. You want your plants to be strong, healthy, and produce lots of fruit. But sometimes, things get in the way, right? Maybe there's not enough sunshine, or the soil is bad, or pests keep eating your leaves. These are like barriers to development for your garden.

In economics, development isn't just about a country getting richer (though that's part of it!). It's about a country becoming a better place for its people to live. Think of it like a country 'growing up' and becoming healthier, smarter, and having more opportunities for everyone. This means people have good schools, hospitals, jobs, and can live long, happy lives.

Barriers are the problems or obstacles that stop a country from 'growing up' and developing. They're like the bad soil or pests in our garden analogy. For example, if a country doesn't have enough doctors, that's a barrier to good health. If kids can't go to school, that's a barrier to education.

Strategies are the smart plans or actions that countries use to overcome these barriers and help their people develop. They're like adding good fertilizer to the soil, making sure your plants get enough water, or using bug spray to protect them. For example, building more schools is a strategy to improve education, and training more doctors is a strategy to improve health. It's all about finding solutions to the problems that hold countries back.

Let's think about a small country that relies mostly on farming, like many countries in Africa. Imagine this country grows a lot of coffee beans and sells them to bigger, richer countries.

One big barrier they might face is price volatility (meaning the price of coffee goes up and down a lot). If there's a really good harvest of coffee beans all over the world, suddenly there's too much coffee, and the price drops dramatically. The farmers in our small country, who worked super hard, now earn very little money. This means they can't afford to send their kids to school, buy medicines, or invest in better farming tools. Their whole country's development gets stuck because of this unpredictable price.

So, what's a strategy they could use? One strategy could be diversification (meaning they try to grow different things, not just coffee). Instead of putting all their eggs in one basket, they might start growing other crops like cocoa, or even try to set up factories to turn their coffee beans into instant coffee or fancy coffee drinks. This way, if the price of raw coffee beans drops, they still have other products to sell, or they can sell the processed coffee for a higher price. This helps them earn more stable income, which can then be used to build schools, hospitals, and improve people's lives.