developing world

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Those countries that are less developed than the industrialized free-market countries of the West and the industrialized former communist countries. Countries of the developing world are the poorest, as measured by their income per head of population, and are concentrated in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The early 1970s saw the beginnings of attempts by countries in the developing world to act together in confronting the powerful industrialized countries over such matters as the level of prices of primary products, with the nations regarding themselves as a group that had been exploited in the past by the developed nations and that had a right to catch up with them. Countries that adopted a position of political neutrality towards the major powers, whether poor or wealthy, are known as non-aligned movement.

Many development studies refer to developing countries as ‘the South’, and to developed and industrialized nations as ‘the North’, because most developing nations are in the southern hemisphere and most industrialized nations are in the northern hemisphere. Developing countries are themselves divided into low income, or least-developed countries (LDCs), such as Angola, Sudan, Bangladesh, and Myanmar; middle-income countries, such as Nigeria, Indonesia, and Bolivia; and upper-middle-income countries, such as Brazil, Algeria, and Malaysia. The developing world has 75% of the world's population but consumes only 20% of its resources. In 1990 the average income per head of population in the northern hemisphere was $12,500, 18 times higher than that in the southern hemisphere, and developing countries accounted for 10% of world exports of manufactured goods. In the 1990s the developing world increased its global share of merchandise exports by 17%, most of the share being in office and electronic equipment, particularly from Mexico, China, and East Asia. However, the exports of the majority of least-developed countries were still confined to primary commodities (cash crops and unprocessed minerals), and growth here remained slow and unpredictable over the period, declining in some years. More than a third of low-income countries saw exports decline in 2000. At the beginning of the 21st century, 1.2 billion people were still existing on less than $1 a day, with another 1.6 billion living on less than $2 a day.

The points of the star represent the first seven verses of the Koran. Red, black, white, and green became the pan-Arab colours. Effective date: 16 April 1928. >>