Economic development can be defined as improving the quality of life of the country's citizens. When there is economic development, there is provision of food, shelter, clean water and medical facilities. According to Gillis et al. (1992), economic development involves structural changes in the structure of the economy. The extraordinary development of information technology has led to the development of other countries, such as the United States of America, where workers work fewer hours at companies such as Google and Facebook. However, some countries are still developing and they share the same characteristics regardless of which continent they are on. Africa has the largest number of developing countries.
Developing countries have the following characteristics. First of all, these are high population rates. Population growth is very high in some developing countries. Women bear many children. The number of children is higher in poor families compared to rich families often, this is because of a lack of family planning options, lack of sex education and the belief that more children could result in a higher labor force for the family to earn income. This increase in recent decades could be because of higher birth rates and reduced death rates through improved health care. With the emergency of non-governmental organizations Zimbabwe is experiencing a low growth in population as people are now using proper control methods.
Low per capita real income is one of the most defining characteristics of developing economies. They suffer from low per capita real income level, which results in low savings and low investments. It means the average person doesn’t earn enough money to invest or save money. They spend whatever they make. Thus, it creates a cycle of poverty that most of the population struggles to escape. The percentage of people in absolute poverty (the minimum income level) is high in developing countries. Currently Zimbabwe is a recession as there is high inflation, money is losing value every day, a high emergency of the black market and informal sector due unemployment the GDP per capita has become low that the government has to suspend Zimbabwe Statics agency not to issue out monthly statistics. As the cost of living rises up, it may however be noted that the extent of poverty prevailing in the developing countries is not fully reflected in the per capita income which is only an average income and also includes the incomes of the rich also. Large inequalities in income distribution prevailing in these economies have made the lives of the people more miserable. A large bulk of population of these countries lives below the poverty line.
Zimbabwe is generally predominantly on agriculture. About 60 to 75 percent of our population depends on agriculture and its allied activities for its livelihood. This excessive dependence on agriculture is the result of low productivity and backwardness of their agriculture and lack of modern industrial growth. With other countries having IT companies that are more valuable than an entire agricultural output of a country such as Zimbabwe. However, as a pillar of industrialization agriculture plays an important role. Even though developing countries are too dependent on agriculture its important also to view the fact that agricultural products need to be added value and some countries have developed through this.
The insufficient amount of physical and human capital is so characteristic a feature in all undeveloped economies that they are often called simply ‘capital-poor’ economies. One indication of the capital deficiency is the low amount of capital per head of population. Not only is the capital stock extremely small, but the current rate of capital formation is also very low. Very low foreign direct investment and the fact that all labor capital would have moved away to greener pastures as in the fact of Zimbabwe our highly skilled force is abroad however some developing nations fail to have a skilled labor force due to the fact that they are poor enough to train and educate their people and have a very low literacy rate.
Underutilization of natural resources, the natural resources in an underdeveloped economy are either unutilized or underutilized. Generally speaking, under-developed countries are not deficient in land, water, mineral, forest or power resources, though they may be untapped. In other words, they constitute only potential resources. The main problem in their case is that such resources have not been fully and properly utilized due to various difficulties such as shortage of capital, primitive technology and the small size of the market. In 2008 diamonds were discovered in Chiadzwa Marange Mutare the government of Zimbabwe did mobilize companies to mine the precious minerals but up to now 2019 the wasn’t a noble development with the revenue extracted from the fields, with cases of fraud and corruption emerging. With those vast revenues earned we still receive poor health services and emergency of diseases such as cholera and typhoid hitting the populace whilst the city in which diamonds were discovered there was less or no development.
In a developing nation protest in the order of the day as the political instability is always in motion Zimbabwe experienced this since 2008 as people fight the government to try and improve their livelihoods. With low productive output the government of Zimbabwe introduced and funded the famous ‘Command Agriculture’ which failed to bring fruitful results as currently we are importing maize from as far as Tanzania to carter for the hungry population even though treasury paid out a lot of money to support command. As Zimbabwe we depend much on primary and unprocessed goods giving a support that we are still a developing country as we don’t have machinery that can add value to our produce, we export raw tobacco, unpolished diamonds, lithium ore. Off which these things were to be processed locally we would add value and boost our exports whilst creating employment for our people, improving their living standards and cut on import bill in the long run.
With the high levels of corruption and political instability it will be difficult for developing nations to take a big leap towards development as they continue to drop on the ladder instead of improving.