Why is Africa the least economically developed continent in the World?
… the country is, the higher the percentage of people employed in Tertiary industry the more developed it is. This map shows the spatial variations in Gross National Product (GNP) in the world, in the form of a North South divide. Continents with high GNP are North of the divide and continents with low GNP are South of the divide. There are many other ways of deciding how developed a country is, this divide could be obtained using percentage of people employed in agriculture or the primary sector. Measures like crude birth rate, total fertility rate and population growth could also be used. From this map, you can see that Africa has the lowest average GNP suggesting that it is the least developed continent. Many of Africa’s countries are very underdeveloped as you can see from the Human Development Index map of Africa (next page). Human Development Index (HDI) is a measure of overall …
