the challenges facing landlocked developing countries: a case study ...

the regional maritime countries; and in east Asia the adult literacy rate of the landlocked
countries is 28% less than that of their maritime neighbors.
Trade
As discussed above, a primary challenge of being landlocked is the increased cost of trade.
Such increased costs are reflected in Table 3, which presents the ratio of transport and
insurance costs to the total value of exports. Overall, this ratio is roughly 9% greater for
landlocked countries than for the maritime countries. For a majority of regions, the average
ratio for landlocked countries is nearly double that of the maritime countries. The notable
exceptions are south and south-east Asia and Swaziland. These countries, however, do not
engage in significant volumes of transoceanic trade, instead exporting overwhelmingly to
their immediate neighbors, India, Thailand or South Africa. This may reflect a diversion of
trade due to the particularly high transit costs, as described in the case studies.
Reflecting the higher trade costs, landlocked countries on average export less than half the
per capita amount of their maritime neighbors. Table 4 presents a regional breakdown of this
measure. Nearly all landlocked countries export less per capita than the average of the
regional maritime countries. The three exceptions, Kazakhstan, Swaziland and Botswana are
all extraordinary cases. Kazakhstan exports primarily oil to its neighbors, Swaziland has a
particularly open trade regime and exports a majority of its trade to South Africa, and
Botswana has thrived on the diamond trade which depends on air transport, thereby
bypassing the challenges of land transport.
1.3.2. COMPARISONS AMONGST LANDLOCKED COUNTRIES
This section explores the variations among landlocked countries. For each indicator, both a
regional and country level analysis are presented.
Human Development
Table A shows the difference between the
average HDI of the regional maritime and
landlocked countries. While the southern
African landlocked countries are doing as
well as their neighbors on average, 12 in all
other regions the landlocked countries are
on average doing worse than their maritime
neighbors. The difference is most
pronounced in western Africa and only
slightly better in Latin America and eastern
Asia.
Table A: Average HDI of Maritime Countries –
Average HDI of Landlocked Countries, by region
HDI
Region
Difference
0.00
Figure 1 provides further detail on variation
among countries by plotting the HDI score of each landlocked country relative to the average
of its regional HDI, allowing some interesting observations:
Best
Worst
Southern
Africa
Central Asia 0.04
Eastern Africa 0.09
Eastern Asia 0.11
Latin America 0.11
Western
Africa
0.12
12 As already mentioned, in southern Africa the maritime countries have suffered dramatically from internal
civil wars and sanctions.
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