The New Bottom Billion: Unlikely Users of Exponential Technologies
Background on the Bottom Billion
In 2007, Paul Collier coined the term “Bottom Billion Countries” (BBCs). It referred to the countries that were falling behind the rest of the world on the most important indices of development. BBCs were so-called because they were home to one billion poorest people in the world. Collier’s work critically analyzed these nations to understand why various forms of international aid failed to produce a significant sustainable impact. He does not provide a list of all the countries because he said he did not want to blacklist them or create a self-fulfilling prophecy. However, he gives numerous examples in his reports and provides characteristics that make it possible to identify these BBCs.
“The real challenge of development is that there is a group of countries at the bottom that are falling behind, and often falling apart.” According to Collier’s research, 70% of the BBCs are in Africa, and the geographic label used for them is “Africa +”, where the plus represents countries like Cambodia, Burma, North Korea, Haiti, Laos, and Yemen.
The New Bottom Billion
The concept of a bottom billion has been revisited since Collier published his book, with updated ideas and arguments about how meaningful the concept has remained over time. The Institute for Development Studies at the University of Sussex presented a report on the new bottom billion. This refers to about 960 million of the world’s poorest people who live in Middle-Income Countries (MICs).
An argument made consistently, in different words, is that the world has moved from poor countries with poor people to fast-growing countries with poor people. The world’s poorest are said to live not in low-income countries (LICs), but also in MICs, and they collectively make up the most excluded sector of the human population. Many of them are found in Nigeria and India, countries that have both taken turns holding the title of “The World’s Poverty Capital”.
Over two decades, there was a change from 92% of the world’s poorest being in LICs, to 72% being found in MICs. Andy Summer’s research caused the development community to question its understanding of poverty and update its thinking considering the earlier conception of a bottom billion. For one, it showed that poverty in economies that were growing, countries that were not technically fragile, was majorly a problem of inequality. Therefore, growth is not enough, how growth is achieved and how the dividends are distributed in society defines whether people there will remain poor or trapped.
The World Bank now classifies countries into 4 categories based on national income: low income, lower middle income, upper middle income, and high income.
While classifications will continue to be updated in tandem with the change in the real world, three things are true and will continue to be so for some time:
- There are still poor people in the world
- The prevailing environment and systems (traps) around them make it difficult for them to rise out of poverty and its related problems
- About a billion of them are located in both low and middle-income countries today.
The poor are found in both MICs and LICs, but more so in the former. The assumption that fast growth automatically leads to improved livelihoods and poverty eradication has not fully translated in these countries. Poverty persists amid economies that have grown enough to enter the MIC classification. Traditional models of aid and development assistance have always focused on the most fragile, and poorest states because that is where the people who need the help have always and predominantly been. Until now. Some of these countries have shifted, and the development actors have refocused on the countries which haven’t. However, some of its population has been left behind in countries that have managed to shift.
Half of the world’s poor people live in India, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, and Bangladesh.
Can the poor benefit from exponential technologies?
Poverty is a common factor among the bottom billion, but it does not occur on its own. Poverty reinforces exclusion by poor health and education. Poverty makes it difficult for people to access education and health resources, and when it is extreme, these resources and the facilities that provide them may not be available. On the other end of the relationship, uneducated and sick people have difficulty escaping poverty, and these conditions can make their circumstances worse by limiting what ability they may have to make an income and improve their standard of living.
A 2015 study on the redistributive impact of government spending in developing countries revealed that spending on healthcare and education accounted for 69% of inequality reduction in the 13 countries under study.
Considering the situation of the poor, they might come across as misplaced in a conversation about exponential technologies. These technologies are exclusive to people in advanced countries, and those educated and exposed enough to afford and use them in the developing world. However, the applications and use cases of these technologies around the world, as well as the nature of technological advancement, means not only that the poor should be in conversations about exponential technologies, but are also some of the best positioned to share in its benefits. Exponential technologies can reposition the bottom billion by focusing on the critical areas of poverty eradication, healthcare, and education.
Read the entire Knowledge Paper — Exponential Technologies for the Bottom Billion.
