Paul Collier’s Landlocked with Bad Neighbors Trap

Briefly outline Paul Collier’s landlocked with bad neighbors trap and his proposed strategies for such countries. How realistic are these strategies? Put another way, to what degree are these countries in a position to shape their development destiny? Explain your reasoning.

In The Bottom Billion, Paul Collier proposed four traps that might make a country rise or poor. “Landlocked with bad neighborhood” is one of them (Collier, 2007, p.53). Paul Collier also proposed some strategies to make this trap from a trouble to a stepping stone by developing the economy with neighbor countries. By scrutinizing both the “Landlocked with bad neighborhood trap” arguments and the strategies proposed by Paul Collier, this paper argues that to a large extent, landlocked countries with poor neighborhood should depend on their own to shape their development destiny.

Firstly, Paul argued that the economic progress of “Landlocked with bad neighborhood” countries may be hindered by high transportation cost. Poor infrastructure in the neighboring countries will significantly increase the cost of transportation for overseas trade. The countries that are blocked-in on all sides are undoubtedly denied the freedom to trade freely with other nations, especially those that are bounded by water. This means that transportation costs of people and goods are higher, which increases the price of all essential items (Collier, 2007, p.53).If the transportation cost is more than the benefit the country can make, no country would like to develop oversea markets. To support his argument, Paul compare Switzerland and Uganda in various aspect. Switzerland are surrounded by German and Italian which have well-developed infrastructure. However, Uganda is surrounded by the countries that either as poor as it is or worse than it.

Secondly, neighboring countries can also be a potential market for economic growth, and poor countries often present a small and weak market. Switzerland has developed countries as neighbors, which might help it to build markets not only in overseas, but also in neighborhoods. Uganda, on the other hand, has poor neighbors, leading to a much smaller economic activity between the two nations. According to Paul Collier, “Uganda has Kenya, which has been stagnant for nearly three decades; Sudan, which has been embroiled in a civil war; Rwanda, which had a genocide; Somalia, which completely collapsed; the Democratic Re- public of the Congo, the history of which was sufficiently catastrophic for it to change its name from Zaire; and finally Tanzania, which invaded it” (page. 55).

Thirdly, it has been shown statistically that countries can be benefited by it’s neighbors’ economic growth. Unfortunately, there are no significant benefits for landlocked country like Uganda.

Collier proposed nine strategies for both landlocked or coastal countries to mitigate the problem of “landlocked with poor neighborhood trap”. For example, the strategies