Important introduction to concepts of development geography

Hello hello hello grade 11s and welcome to yet it's yet another video. So this one will be on the concept of development and yeah we're basically in development geography now these are the kind of topics that people like to skip or they like to that's chilled. Yes it's bit more chilled because it's related to stuff you see and hear and like your geomorphology where you can't even see some of these things. However, the this is the part where the examiner will have your more level three, level four questions to analyze and test your your thinking and your you know how you can analyze and critically answer certain questions. So, which is why believe good foundation can help you do really well in this chapter. But without wasting any more time, let us get into the lesson. Okay, so firstly, what is development? And quite honestly, the answer depends on who's asking. But as geography student in geography, we speak of development as being the overall pro progress of country. basically where the country is at, you know, and it's not only just about the amount of wealth that it generates or, you know, how much the people earn, etc., etc., but it's also how the people live, how the people think, how the people innovate, how the people Yeah. just generally. So, it's it's it's the economy, but it's also other aspects. And these aspects are for example as we've mentioned the economy how much wealth is produced in that country and how it's shared you know that has that that's that's characteristic of development. Another thing is how the people live the diversity how the people interact with other modern influences. Another thing is you know the social aspect of life you know how free are the people you know that's another thing that we look at when we measure development because you find that there are some countries where economically the people are doing well it's wealthy country it has high GDP per capita which is something we'll address later however the people are not free you know they are there's certain things that they are restricted in they can't play certain sports or etc etc etc. So yeah development there's lot of aspects that we need to look at and so that's development but go back to go back to our original you know definition it's basically the overall progress of country where the country is right so that is what we can start off by saying development is so development shows that country's economic and social conditions have improved by good management of the natural and human resources to create wealth and to improve the quality of life of the people living there. So basically as I've touched on it's like okay country has these has these resources and it's used these resources to create you know this amount of money and it's been able to use the amount of money well so that the people living there have good quality of life in essence. Okay moving on. So here are two aspects of development that we are going to focus on. Starting off is standard of living. So standard of living is basically the measure of person's access to resources and the value thereof. What do mean? So by that mean how how easy is it for person to have access to healthcare facilities and what type of health care facilities does the person has have access to? What kind of education does person have access to? How are they eating? You know that's that that's also it shows you the standard of living that person has and also the value thereof. So are they eating expensive food? Are they going to expensive schools? Are do they have access to expensive health care, their possessions? Where do they live in what neighborhood? What cars do they drive? That tells us about the standard of living. And we are able to use that to compare standard of living between different countries. And that can then indicate you know the the development of the countries based on measuring that. So standard of living is bit easier to measure because it's quantifiable. You know house has value, car has value. It's stuff you can quantify. But then there's another aspect of development that you can't really qualify. mean quantify and that is quality of life. That is the measure of an individual's overall satisfaction, happiness, and their well-being. And that's also another very important measure of development. How satisfied are the people? Because you find that there are there are countries where there's high standard of living, but the people don't have very good quality of life. They do not have rights. They can't speak out. they don't they don't they don't have what's this job satisfaction. Yes, there's they're making money. So, you know, that's another aspect of development that we look we need to look at. But this one is bit more difficult because you can't can't measure you can't measure that. okay. Okay. My name is Pumla. Pumla has 27% levels of happiness. just had to think of that out of the top of my head. But you can't really measure that. But that's also something we look at when we speak of development, you know. So yeah, just need needed to mention those those aspects of development. And just to go back to the initial point where development sorry is about how the country is able to use the resources and that it has and provide goods and services because you find for example countries that have basically no natural resources. An example of this is Switzerland. However, the resources that they have be it human resources, they use them well and it's it's it's country where there's high levels of development you know and people have access to good health care etc etc etc. So it's about using what you have making use of it so that people are are well taken care of are happy good standard of living. okay. Okay. Now we're going to get into the five sectors of the economy. And the percentage of people employed in each sector also gives us an indication of the economic development of country. So you've seen as I've been speaking throughout this video is that there are various indications. There are various factors that we look at to determine where country lies in terms of economic development and this is one of them. So we have the primary economic sector and this sector is the sector that only mainly focuses on the extractions of natural resources. What do we mean by that? We mean mining, agriculture, fishing, forestry. So basically anything that has to do with extracting natural resources from the earth or the environment that is primary economic activity or economic sector. Then the next one are your secondary economic activities and these activities have to do with processing these raw materials that have been ex extracted and manufacturing products from them. And then the tertiary economic activities are or the sector these are your activities where it's mainly service based. So they provide services such as banking, insurance etc. They don't they seldom make any tangible goods. It's all about service. Those are the three primary mean three traditional sectors. And then we have gone on and now we have quturnary economic activities. And these economic activities have to do with research and development. And it requires more expertise and providing information, you know. And then we also have another one which is queenery. And these are the highest levels of decision making. We're talking manager not managers but like let's say in large multinational company the people that are at the top making executive decisions it's really just more specialized form of the quatonery in terms of like specialized. So here this is where you have highly skilled and highly educated people you know and so the percentage as said earlier of the people working in each sector gives us an idea of the development of country. So your more developed countries, your first world countries as they were previously called or your rich countries or your your me DC. Yeah, they will have more people in the greenerary and quturnary sectors of the economy in comparison to less economically developed countries which will have higher percentage of people working in the primary or the tertiary sector of the economy you know. So those are just yeah some other indicators that we use for development and hope I'm not forgetting anything. but yeah that's that we move on and then now we go on to the levels of development or the economic classification of the countries. So as again I've been speaking you have your less economically developed countries. These were your these were previously known as third world countries. So in these countries primary economic activities are dominant. So here the countries are mainly focused on extracting natural resources. I'll make an example of country like Uganda. So country like Uganda has coffee an availability of coffee the coffee plant. So there they are primarily focused on extracting you know that and we have an example of primary economic activity. don't know why all the countries just left my mind. You also have country like India. They they are responsible for exporting lot of spices. So that's primary that's an example of less economically developed country because they have lot of that you know. And so the another characteristic of these countries is that mechanization on farms is quite low. So they still make use of their hands. They are not like your United States of America where farming is heavily mechanized. They are using equipment to do all of this work, you know. And yeah, whereas in less economically developed countries, it's still mainly, you know, hand using by hand. We're using simple tools. And these countries are in the early stages of the economic development because of the fact that they are still they have high domination high do they they are highly they practice lot of primary economic activities and another thing to note is also that they have high levels of an informal sector. So an example of that would be my word informal street vendors you know yeah stuff like that sectors that are not regulated where that's an that's an example of an informal sector and then the next one is newly industrialized economy. So these are countries that have strong manufacturing sector. An example of country like this is your China. it's another example is country like Vietnam where they are primarily focused on manufacturing. So they're using primary resources and they are just manufacturing and converting these goods into tertiary or into into products that we can use yeah tangible or physical products. And so the point here says many transactionals move to NIC's to take advantage of cheap labor and land. like Vietnam, lot of industries like I'll make an example with Nike. Nike, lot of Nike products are produced in Vietnam because there's cheap labor and the land is cheaper. So, and they have strong manufacturing sector. So, these transnationals can make use of countries like that. yeah, that's that. And then the last one is more economically developed countries. And these are your first world countries. These are developed countries that are just doing well, you know, and they've automated manufacturing. yeah, they've automated lot of things. So remember earlier we were talking when we were speaking on the develop mean the definition of development. These countries are they have lot of innovation going on you know. So they automate lot of things and yeah or they transfer the manufacturing to the NIC's. They have very strong tertiary, quinary and quinary actually economic sectors. There are high levels of employment. There's high standard of living. There's very low levels. Okay, I've already mentioned employment. they have high they have good education, health and transport systems. And another thing that forgot is the LEDs have poor transportation systems. So you'll see in these countries where traffic is quite bad. I'll make an example with city like Lagos, Nigeria, if you have seen the public transport in Nigeria is isn't very good. people can be stuck in traffic for hours and the driving situation whereas you'll have country like Germany which is more economically de developed countries the public transport is efficient people can use buses trains cycling you know because these countries have good transportation systems so that is yeah those are just some of the characteristics what really like about this chapter as said you can you can just look at what's going on around you and then apply your mind and then also study of course but you can really afford to do well. Okay, we touched on this earlier but we'll just go back into it and just make sure that we've addressed everything. so it's making mentions of high G&P and that we're still going to get to it, but high gross national product. They have low birth and death rates that can be attributed to various factors such as good quality health care. The people have higher standard of living. So you can also mention how they can afford to eat well. You can also and that has an impact on birth and death rates you know. So yeah, we can look at that they have high levels of literacy because obviously they have good education systems in place and these countries export mainly manufactured goods because mean they have they are highly industrialized and they've automated these industries or they've outsourced this to the newly industrialized countries and here people have access to safe water and sanitation. This isn't this isn't always the case in low economically developed countries. And so this when we look at these two graphs, this is this is characteristic of low economically devel developed country because we can see that the base is wider and that tells us that there's higher percentage of people that are under 25, people that are under 18 essentially. And that's also problem on its own. And you might be asking yourself, why is that problem? These people are economically inactive, meaning they cannot contribute to the economy. If anything, the economy and the taxes needs to contribute to them. That isn't always positive thing. And there's fewer old people because there's such high death rates. Whereas in your more economically developed countries, you see that the base is narrower. So they have high percentage of economically active people that can pay taxes that are not necessarily dependent on the government for resources. So this is great for the economy, you know. So and when you look at the top they it's also wider than in the developing countries because we have lower death rates. So those are just some of the differences and this is another this is another graph that shows the employment structure. So you see that not lot of people are involved in the primary economic activities. Most people are involved in the tertiary and this can be further divided to quatonary and quinary you know and then few in secondary. So this is positive indication because also primary economic activities don't necessarily have high pay. This in most cases is an unskilled labor force. Whereas here you have skilled labor force and they earn more and earning more is really good thing for government because they can tax the people more. And if they can tax the people more then mean corruption aside if they can tax the people more then they are able to provide more services such as education, health care, transport etc etc etc. And then if we go to less economically developed country it's different story. majority of the people in the primary sector low wages. Low wages are often untaxed by the government. So the government does then they don't have the financial capacities to improve, you know. So yeah, this is just some of the the the indicators or certain things or aspects that you need to understand when we're dealing with this chapter because they will rarely ask you like straightforward. mean they will yes but it's going to be lot of case studies. So you need to apply everything that you know so that you can do well. Yeah. Okay. I've addressed that part and then now we need to also then go to these economic I'm just scrolling see my notes okay how can we measure development because obviously how do we know that country is more developed than country we we need indicators how do we know that again Germany is more developed than South Africa So we will be looking at these indicators and these indicators are the gross domestic product, the gross national product, power, purchasing power, parity, poverty rate, etc., etc., etc. So I'll try my best to not read everything because you can just pause and read, right? However, want to explain certain things like remember as student didn't particularly understand purchasing power parity. What does that mean? So power purchase purchasing power par in simple terms is have one let me say have $100 in the United States of America. have $100 in South Africa. What can that $100 get me in the USA? And what can that $100 get me in South Africa? So that's basically the level of the GMPP adjusted to the cost of living. So you may find that yes, people in the United States are earning more and so forth and so forth, but what they are earning if they if we had to compare it to someone who's in South Africa, you might find that they have the same standard of living, you know, because of the local costs of living. So that's simple way to understand. have $100 in USA. What does it get me? have $100 in South Africa. What does that get me? And based on what know, $100 in South Africa will get you more than $100 in the USA. So that's just more simplified explanation of purchasing power par. And so we have the traditional traditional measures which were the gross domestic product. And they have their flaws. They have their flaws which is why all these other indicators were added because it's yes it's it's like the the the it's like the measure of the value of all of the goods and services produced etc etc etc but it doesn't always show the differences of wealth in the country. And then we have another indicator which is the gross national product. And the key difference is that the gross national product also includes the the capital of the citizens of nation regardless of where where they live. What do mean by that? So gross domestic product is only calculated for things within South Africa. the goods and the services within South Africa. However, let's say we have John. John also has assets and produces and and makes an income from Japan. When we're calculating gross national product, we are going to include that as well. But with gross domestic product, we will not. It's only for stuff that is within the border of South Africa. The goods and the services that are within the borders of South Africa. And another thing that we can look at to measure economic development is the poverty rate. So we it's basically describing the condition of like how the population is living. no, that's not good that's not good example. Okay, so you you'll often hear in country 25 people are living below the poverty line, which means they live on less than dollar day. So that is an indication of the development of country. How many people are below the poverty line? Countries that are more economic, more economically developed countries will have lower much lower percentage of the povert poverty rate in comparison to your developing countries. Okay, feel like took more time than should have on that part. And then we also have human and social development measures and that is the physical quality of life. That's where they measure the literacy rates, the life expectancy and infant infant mortality and infant mortality is basically the number of infant deaths per thousand. And as you can per year as you can assume developing country or less economically developed country will have higher rate of infant mortality. Why? this can be attributed to poor health care. This can be attributed to factors such as malnutrition. This can be attributed to illiteracy literacy rates because you might find that someone who is more literate is more able is able to handle their pregnancy better because of knowledge and the expect that's not that's more subject that's not fact but I'm just like trying to just add so all of these factors play role in infant mortality And yeah so the physical quality of life index also looks at that. And then we also have the human development index and that is it takes account the economic and the social development which is the physical quality of life etc etc where it ranges it's score that ranges from 0 to one. However, there are limitations with all of the the human development indexes and your genical efficient because there are certain countries where you can't calculate this because and also another thing that you can't always quantify this. So yeah, it has its flaws but it's also good way to to look at how country is doing. you know how how many people have access to basic services etc etc etc and then here demographic development okay I've already discussed that and just going further where it says life expenses expectancy is one of the traditional indicators of health of of health and of development. So naturally developed country you will expect people to have higher life expectancy and developing you will expect people to have lower because of other aspects like health care, education, standard of living etc etc etc. Okay and that's basically it for this first video. did not expect it to be this long. My apologies. but just was trying to explain it as best as can because as said earlier, believe that good foundation can help you because this is really about analyzing using what you know and then just putting it together and being able to answer your questions. But as always, thank you for tuning in and let's see each other in the next video.