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Kabul’s Plan to Realize Afghanistan’s Geographic Dividend

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The Debate | Economy | South Asia

Kabul’s Plan to Realize Afghanistan’s Geographic Dividend

The Afghan government is working to turn the country’s landlocked location into an asset.

Kabul’s Plan to Realize Afghanistan’s Geographic Dividend
Credit: Flickr/ Hassan Reza

Back in 1776, Adam Smith observed that “all the inland parts” of Africa and Asia were the world’s least developed areas. Even today, well over two centuries later, most of these landlocked countries are still trapped in poverty. Countries without direct coastal access to the sea and to maritime trade face many challenges from the outset that limit their potential gains from trade in this globalized world compared to their coastal neighboring countries. The Human Development Index is a stark indication of how poorly landlocked countries are performing: low standards of living, high child mortality, high levels of poverty, low health care quality, and crippled education systems. In the Human Development Report of 2016, 10 out of the 32 countries with the lowest HDI scores are landlocked.

In today’s competitive world, it is an understatement, to say the least, that landlocked countries generally face a difficult situation. Although being landlocked is a challenge, it is not destiny. Afghanistan – a landlocked, underdeveloped country – is taking practical steps, discussed below, to turn the liability of being a landlocked country into an asset for the prosperity of this war-torn nation. 

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