Well, if you are a radical political economist, then you believe that the aid and development industry are siphoning resources from low-income countries and purposely keeping them underdeveloped. Dependency theory is a bit outdated, many use more current marxist theories to describe this global phenomenon.

Nazia Asad , what is your opinion?

Yes, it could be one of the factors, but many conflicting and competing forces play its role in making developing countries more under developed and unstable; as native corruption, internal and external power play, are main factors, social and cultural values also play role, though sometimes, could not be fully described. Yes, if we see, one world order tactics, then forces who wanted to establish their rule, create circumstances that lead to more poverty, hunger, corruption, and economic and general stability.

It is dependency theory. Where poor countries be the periphery of developed countries. Being periphery means poor countries will always depend on developed countries. And it is their desire to them always poor in order to gain bigger control. This relationship mainly caused by the inability for poor countries to make innovation or development progress, instead of keep extracting their natural resources.

Developing/poor countries are poor in their society structure in general. This situation produces - naturally - corruption, poverty, tardiness.....The most dangerous situation is when society has got perfect rules (divine...) and apply it greedily and selfishly. In such situations, power is the only dominant, no room for justice, nor for humanity !

Well, if you are a radical political economist, then you believe that the aid and development industry are siphoning resources from low-income countries and purposely keeping them underdeveloped. Dependency theory is a bit outdated, many use more current marxist theories to describe this global phenomenon.

The structure of the global system that placed developing countries at the periphery and the developed countries at the center in global power relations is one of the factors for analysis.

Another variable is the developing countries' internal weak systems and structures such as poor leadership which contributes to bad governance occasioned by high level of citizens' apathy in public affairs contribute to corruption and underdevelopment. Citizens have limited capacity to hold their leaders to account.

Developed countries should ensure that funds gotten through corrupt practices are not deposited in their country.

Great explanations are included in all of the responses. Thank you so much Nazia Asad , Thomas Soseco , Yasser Jaamour , Sabine Franklin , Alphonsus Nwoye .

I think it's not about applying the theory scientifically. But the promotion of theory as inevitable truth. in this case it becomes a political action par excellence, political systems use this theory to justify failure, authoritarianism and corruption.

I think any poor countries that know the way and walk on it will succeed. it takes 10 years in the right way. A poor country can succeed by playing on the balance of major powers. This requires a conscious political system and a society that knows its strengths and weaknesses

Well Ahmed Mousa Badawi not if the system is rigged against many countries from succeeding. The point of the theory is also that many "development initiatives" like free trade agreements and even "governance indicators" are designed to favor core countries (like the U.S. or U.K) and keep the periphery countries (like Guinea) underdeveloped. As well as indicators for good governance are modeled after them (even though corruption and lack of transparency exists in core countries), so governance in the periphery are always viewed and measured as poor or weak. It would be nearly impossible for periphery countries to reflect Western governments, especially since donor-conditionalities that are very liberal, do not reflect the actual state-led development path that core countries took in the early to mid twentieth century.

This is a science forum and is not the point, nor my point here to talk about politics, it will distort our aim to find an objective basis to all our analysis. I found the topic so interesting and would like to take part later but can't go ahead without making a remark about policies like US blockade to Cuba, a country that has not made anything but export health, health products and sugar and receives a "well designed" policy to delay its development. This good will of investment can't be applied to Cuba. Is Cuba a nuclear superpower. It wont be that countries that have aligned better its internal efforts to achieve developments are then considered dangerous. The good will is then sincere and so vehement??

After scanning through the discussions so far I tend to agree with those that attribute poverty in developing countries to a multiplicity of factors and theories. But my problem is that assuming without admitting that dependency theory makes poor developing countries disadvantaged to their developed countries counterparts, the little resources that is gained from the sale of raw materials what happens to it? How is this little resources managed? I think this is key.

To paraphrase the words of Chinua Achebe; the problem of developing countries can be laid at the doorsteps of leadership (that is a fact). Leadership matters. Think of China, Singapore, and the Asian Tigers - where would they have been in terms of development if not for pragmatic and effective leadership?

I will borrow from Kwame Nkrumah and argue that aside leadership, organisation decides everything. If the developing countries refuse to organise themselves properly (under effective and pragmatic leadership), they will remain developing for eternity.

Enough of the blame game. It is time for pragmatism.

To me, colonial exploitation was the prime cause for their current level of poverty scenario. Political or state corruption is the post-independent phenomenon along with the metropolis-periphery dependency correlations.

Whilst the dependency theory could be used to explain poverty in developing countries, it is limited in the sense that it considers internal factors of developing countries - that contribute to the vicious cycle of poverty to a much greater extent - irrelevant or views them as symptoms and consequences of dependence. I therefore tend to agree with Sabine Franklin that the theory is a bit outdated.

The cause of this vicious cycle of poverty in developing countries is multifaceted. Indeed, many reasons, as discussed above, account for it as I once indicated in a similar discussion on this platform (see https://www.researchgate.net/post/Why_developing_countries_remain_poor). For example, we can talk of unfair trade policies through which developed countries protect or monopolise key industries through which developing ones could use to accelerate their development on the one hand and unfavourable loan conditionalities, which tend to create rough roads to development in developing countries, thereby rubbishing their growth exertions on the other hand. For example, DailyGuide Africa reported in September this year that the International Monetary Fund (IMF’s) bailout has hampered the socio-economic development in Ghana as indicated by a Policy Think Tank in the country. You can read the report at http://dailyguideafrica.com/imf-bailout-slows-down-ghanas-devt/.

There is also issue of wealth distribution, i.e. poor distribution of resources within developing countries. However, in as much as this issue cannot be ignored when we consider the causes of poverty in developing countries, we cannot overlook the disturbing issue of exploitation - e.g., tax evasion, direct implant of foreign systems into essentially incompatible environments, etc - of their numerous resources by foreign investors and corporations from developed or industrialised countries from the standpoint of radical political economics. For example, the Health Poverty Action, with a focus on Africa, argued that “While $134B flows in each year, predominantly in the form of loans, foreign investment and aid; $192B is taken out, mainly in profits made by foreign companies, tax evasion and the costs of adapting to climate change. The result is that Africa suffers a net loss of $58 billion a year. As such, the idea that we are aiding Africa is flawed; it is Africa that is aiding the rest of the world." This means outflow costs to Africa surpass the inflows the continent gets through aid. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5hdcfFyahM for further details.

Notwithstanding these issues, developing countries are to be blamed for their underdevelopment and poverty. To borrow from President Paul Kagame of Rwanda, there is no reason why developing countries cannot grow to the levels seen in the industrialised countries with good management of whatever they have, whether big or small. Leadership therefore matters as indicated by, e.g., Thomas above. But thanks to poor leadership in such countries, structures needed to pursue comprehensive methodologies to address bottlenecks to development have been weakened through greed and selfish interests of (political) officials and individuals. Without any strong political will to fight it, deep-rooted corruption of all forms thus hinders development agenda, making it a major cause of the vicious cycle of poverty. Instead of using foreign aid to activate the development process by, e.g., build institutions and economies, they are misappropriated and/or siphoned by corrupt politicians and officials who generally get an easy way out as a result of soft laws on corruption.

I agree; in general, the current well-known robbery in Pakistan depicted the real face of NAWAZ SHAREEF family. And yes dependency theory is quite effective in outlining the relationship b/w poor and rich countries through its description of the constraints posed by the international global economy.

Hello friends, interesting points of view brought by many of the ones taking part on this forum. One important thing showed here for some of yours taking part is the mature thinking in social – economic aspects in spite that many are young. Youth and experience are qualities that so often don’t overlap but some of yours showed it’s not impossible. I won’t repeat analysis of Sabine, Thomas and Lawrence, many of the countries in Africa need of yours to lead the way or even to receive aid. As Thomas said, the only way to “say ‘Enough!!’ to blame game” is organize internally co-operate among countries that have the possibility to have complementary aspects, make the best of internal thinking: understanding words of Mandela (brought by Elizabeth) but paraphrasing both: ‘Education is the main, the basic COUNTER_weapon of our countries’ because our countries can never be seen as offensive to world but defensive as well. So are our strategies face to systems that have proven for years --and history keeps track of it-- that can easily and under any pretext deploy an offensive war to seize interesting economic areas and mainly its resources. Please don’t consider countries that don’t obey blindly to IMF’s hampering policies, as dangerous: Countries have the right to defend by themselves in the social-economic aspect and have also the right and the commitment to activate properly their internal productive forces to make the best of their societies with the aid but not with the imposition of wicked loans or rules to finally left them weak and dependent. Who really want to aid, searches a complementarity that develops parallel to “core” countries development without conditioning developing ones to social impoverishment mainly in those aspects involved in survival and in creation of local development basis. A term in use nowadays: ‘pragmatism’ suggested by some of yours have a connected term in use and is ‘dialectic’ very used in theoretical body of Marxism, please take a look because more than ideology this is a well-structured body of social science to consult when developing or analyzing other theories or even strategies. Studying all the sources and theories without making automatic “ideological” exclusions makes our own strategy stronger.