Why do some countries stay poor despite having abundant natural resources?

[ZAINmalik75]

WHAT THINGS ARE NEEDED TO TURN NATURAL RESOURCES INTO PROSPERITY IN YOUR POINT OF VIEW ?

I think there are two things that primarily cause this problem, where a country might have an abundance of natural resources of still have a poor economy and a suffering population. The first one is obviously corruption in the government because when those in control are corrupt to the core, no matter how much resources are discovered, they are never going to use the money they made from selling those resources to do something for the country, but they will take all the money for themselves and keep the country and the economy miserable so that the common people suffer because they don't care about them at all.

The second thing that can cause problems is sanctions from international bodies such as the UN, because if there are sanctions imposed on a country, no matter how many natural resources they have, they won't be able to make much out of it since they won't be able to trade the resources with other countries and hence have no benefits for having those resources, because a country can only become rich and have a great economy if they have natural resources and are also allowed to have international trades with other major countries.

[Cookdata]

Corruption and poor economic management of natural and human resources are the three major reasons why well endowed countries with natural resources still remain poor. This situation is common in the Africa and Asia continents where political leadership is bereft of ideas. Nothing else explains it better. My country is an example of this. With her numerous natural resources in crude oil, bitumen, coal, gas, limestone, lead and zinc, just to mention a few, Nigeria is still categorized as a poor country. In the actual sense, the country isn't poor; it's just that it's poorly managed by her political leadership. So, it's with many other countries.

You forgot to include nepotism where one family controls one government institution. There are some government institutions that you will never here about job recruitment, they are always hidden and share among themselves when there is new applications and it will never go to outsider, it's always between the families and friends. For years now, I have never seen a single person that applied for NNPC job application openly and got the slot, always hard.

To here this becomes normal, huge numbers of people are been sideline, this is why poverty is on the increase and corruption is on the high as well. The bad impact about this is that people see it as normal, people have emulate corruption as norm in the society that it's difficult to eradicate, because tell me why should I want to stop corruption when the rest are doing it? You may even be evicted from trying to make the place better.

[bhadz]

I will take my country as an example. There is no doubt that we're so rich in natural resources and very abundant and yet, why we're importing rice when we've got vast lands in our nation that's being worked upon by the farmers? Corruption. And the same goes with the mining companies who are destroying the mountains and they just leave it astray after digging it. Corruption still. We're actually rich into those matters and yet, utilizing it by the hands of the corrupt politicians makes us poor and they're only focusing on their pockets to be filled than for the people to take the perks of having it.

[Pandorak]

The key is integrity.

If the government fulfills its duties without expecting any reward or benefit beyond the salary it receives, then i am absolutely certain that all the resources generated will surely lead to the people’s prosperity more quickly. But the reality is that it’s hard for us to find officials who truly care, most are only thinking of themselves and their own groups. Even if there are officials who do care, they’re often brought down quickly, perhaps by being set up or falsely accused of various things that force them to lose their positions or even end up in prison.

[Mpamaegbu]

For years now, I have never seen a single person that applied for NNPC job application openly and got the slot, always hard.

Just bear it in mind that once job adverts from big companies and multinationals like that hit national newspapers that those jobs are already filled. These companies only put out such notifications for formality sake. Vacancies are often advertised within such companies in hushed tones. I know of someone close to me at the time who left his banking job for NNPC almost two decades ago. When he broke the news to me and I asked him when it was advertised, dude just smiled and said, "forget it". Jobs that are usually thrown to the public are low paying jobs. Nepotism and favouritism have really eaten deep into the fabrics of our society.

You may even be evicted from trying to make the place better.

Exactly! One can even be stigmatized for attempting to do the right thing.

[Nanga Parbat]

I tend to agree with you. People are not wrong to say that corruption and poor governance are the reason why a country remain poor despite possessing abundant mineral resources. However, that is just the tip of the iceberg, and the deeper reason behind it is that colonialism or imperialism has not disappeared at all. They are still quietly operating under new names, dressed up as development cooperation, foreign investment or technical assistance.

Instead of using the army, warships, and bombs to invade and plunder. Now, they set up puppet governments, manipulate politics, create financial trap, and quietly pull the strings from behind the scenes.

Every one has discussed the corruption or poor government and weak management of developing countries. Yes all these are the prior reason of this but I think lack of advanced technology or skilled workers are also a big reason of poverty. Usually a country who is rich in resources they sell these to other countries at low prices. Because it's is in raw form so they prefer to export it because they have no technology to process it.  So developed countries received these resources at low prices and process it and shaped it into different goods . Then under developed countries buy these products at higher prices. These prices difference create inflation or burden on the economy. Selling at low but buying at high means get lower income while they have to pay more reserves this create inflation or put high payments burden on the economy.

[Berry2d]

The key is integrity.

If the government fulfills its duties without expecting any reward or benefit beyond the salary it receives, then i am absolutely certain that all the resources generated will surely lead to the people’s prosperity more quickly. But the reality is that it’s hard for us to find officials who truly care, most are only thinking of themselves and their own groups. Even if there are officials who do care, they’re often brought down quickly, perhaps by being set up or falsely accused of various things that force them to lose their positions or even end up in prison.

Lack of Integrity is a common disease found among or in the lifes of our leaders now which is the main reasons poverty still keeps spreading despite the existence of abundant resources in most countries especially in African countries.   I know many will be wondering why I mentioned Africa specifically when they are not the only continent with high level of poverty.
In the world now, Africa is the continent with the highest mineral resources but they remain the poorest continent just because of leaders that lacks integrity and are controlled by greedy and selfish mindset which I know until that mentality changes they will remain poor.

[retreat]

The key is integrity.

If the government fulfills its duties without expecting any reward or benefit beyond the salary it receives, then i am absolutely certain that all the resources generated will surely lead to the people’s prosperity more quickly. But the reality is that it’s hard for us to find officials who truly care, most are only thinking of themselves and their own groups. Even if there are officials who do care, they’re often brought down quickly, perhaps by being set up or falsely accused of various things that force them to lose their positions or even end up in prison.

Integrity is something we very rarely see in our public officials these days. I remember there is one officials who used to be a governor, he did his job very well and had high integrity, but because of one slip of the tongue regarding religion, he became the target of a group of people and had to serve time in prison. Since then, we've rarely seen officials with integrity like his. If only we had more officials with this kind of integrity, our country would be in a much stronger position today. But what we see now are officials who have no shame in being involved in corruption and who don't care about the lives of the people.