Skillshare International: Bridging the gap between North and South?

Essay from the year 2006 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: Development Politics, grade: 1.7, The Australian National University, language: English, abstract: The gap between rich and poor has never been so wide. The income of the richest fifty

million people (a mere one percent of world population) is at par with the combined

income of 2.7 billion people sharing a life of extreme poverty.1 Moreover the unequal

distribution of wealth and social wellbeing measured in levels of education or literacy,

life expectancy, child mortality and economic performance are geographically skewed.

The people in the north of the globe are living a good life, while the people living south

of the tropic of cancer often struggle for survival. Especially on the African continent,

¿development¿ has failed. The statistics for Sub-Saharan Africäs development are

particularly alarming. Here real per-capita incomes have dropped significantly over the

last decades leaving half of the population with less than One Dollar ($1) per day.2

HIV/AIDS and other communicable diseases continue to cripple the region like nowhere

else on the planet, not only challenging ongoing development efforts, but also by filling

orphanages and cemeteries in a disturbing pace.3