A developing country connotes a country with a less evolved commercial base and a low Human Development Index that correlates with that of other countries. Most of the time, this definition is not usually acknowledged. As a matter of fact, there is no clear establishment that developing countries fit into this bracket.
It is not unheard of that the country Nigeria can do a lot better when it comes to the area of social and economic development. Unfortunately, Nigeria does even make it to the ranking of the developed countries amidst its immense population. This makes a lot of persons wonder if there is still any hope for Nigeria in development. But the question keeps crossing a lot of inquisitive minds, ‘is Nigeria even a developing country?’, you will be supplied with those answers in no time!
Is Nigeria A Developing Country?
Even though there are a lot of States in the African continent, Nigeria has not been appended in the record of the least developed countries. Seemingly, Nigeria is more developed than a lot of African countries. Still and all, this does not make Nigeria a developed country.
The reason for this deduction is that the Gross Domestic Product(GDP) of the country is way too low to push it to the list of the developed states. Along with this, the industrialization of Nigeria is yards behind that of countries that made their way to the list of developed countries.
Based on Gross National Income — GNI, the World Bank has successfully grouped the respective economies into four distinct groups. From high and upper-middle to lower-middle and low-income countries, the groupings are pretty accurate. The term LMIC is short for Low and Middle-Income countries, and it is used correspondingly a lot of the time, but it simply alludes to the economy of countries.
In a nutshell, Nigeria is a developing country, not a developed country. In the database of October 2018 for Human Development Index(HDI) ranking, the International Monetary Fund dubbed Nigeria a developing country. The Nation was ranked one hundred and fifty-seventh out of a hundred and eighty-nine countries. Inasmuch as the result is far from the perfect score, it wasn’t among the lowest-ranked states either.
Why Is Nigeria a Developing Country?
There are a lot of reasons why Nigeria is still termed as a developing country. Among the many problems the country is facing, the most prominent are; corruption, poor health care, insecurity, infant mortality, and poor education which gives rise to high illiteracy rates. Developing countries are known to possess certain features in common which qualifies them as fitting into that status.
There is usually widespread poverty, low education levels, corruption in all levels of government and human relations, political instability, deficient access to family planning, too many informal settlements, substandard infrastructure, poor road systems, a high rate of traffic accidents, and neglected tropical deficiencies.
In the area of health risks, developing countries face common issues such as; inadequate access to safe drinking water, high levels of pollution, poor sanitation and hygiene, high rates of infectious diseases among humans and animals, be and generally poor infrastructure. Now Nigeria is a developing country because it ticks all the out-listed characteristics.
Making Out The Difference Between Developed And Developing Countries
Quantifying the differences between developed and developing countries could price difficult sometimes, nevertheless, employing the use of metrics to gauge the development of a country can help curb the difficulty. Along with metrics, the Gross Domestic Product is a widely recognized tool for checking the health of a nation’s economy.
A number of times, one tool can have the possibility of being more accurate than the other, nonetheless, there’s always a way out. While none of the aforementioned methods are inherently wrong, large countries with complex entities could make matters quite complicated. This is because it’s hard to categorize such countries neatly. The reason being that a lot of countries display several characteristics that fit into more than one classification.
Subtle Rays Of Hope
To support developing countries, financial aids such as development cooperation or development aids are donated by the government of other countries. The gesture was spearheaded by the United Nations under the agency of Sustainable Developmental Growth to help developing countries overcome a lot of problems they daily face to a significant extent. This goes a long way in promoting economic, political, environmental, and social development.
Wrap-up
Amidst the many issues Nigeria is facing, the citizens are urged to not give up. The country meets all the criteria of developing countries. Yes, it has got all the issues that developing countries are dealing with, surprisingly, however, Nigeria is more stable than underdeveloped countries as funny as it may sound.
Bearing this in mind, it is important that citizens work every day to become the best version of themselves. With little positive changes and subtle encouragements from each other, society will eventually get better.