The question of whether Nigeria is a "Third World" country requires an understanding of the term's historical context and its modern-day implications. Originally, the term "Third World" was used to describe a country’s political alliances, but its meaning has evolved over time.
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The Historical Context of "Third World"
Originally coined by French historian Alfred Sauvy in 1952, “Third World” was part of the “three worlds” label system used to describe a country’s political alliances.
- The “First World” countries were the largely democratic NATO countries such as the United States, Japan, and much of Western Europe.
- The “Second World” countries were the Communist Bloc countries, including the Soviet Union, China, and their allies.
However, the meaning of Third World changed after the fall of the Soviet Union (and the end of the Cold War) in the early 1990s. “Third World” lost its political root and came to refer to economically poor and non-industrialized countries, as well as newly industrialized countries.
This shifting definition has led to significant confusion as to which countries could correctly be called Third World today. For example, going by the historical definition, nations such as Finland, Sweden, Ireland, and Switzerland were not aligned with either NATO or the Communist Bloc, and so were Third World countries.
Adding insult to inaccuracy, when used in its modern context, Third World is considered to be a derogatory term that degrades countries which are developing and/or poor.
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The Modern Interpretation of "Third World"
Whatever term is used, it serves to designate countries that suffer from high poverty, high child mortality, low economic and educational development, and low self-consumption of their natural resources. These are the developing and technologically less advanced nations of Asia, Africa, Oceania, and Latin America.
Third world nations tend to have economies dependent on the developed countries and are generally characterized as poor with unstable governments and having high fertility rates, high gender-related illiteracy and are prone to diseases. One of the critical factors is the lack of a middle class; there is a huge impoverished population and a small elite upper class that controls the country's wealth and resources.
The map above shows the two major geopolitical blocs, some 'neutral,' non-aligned countries, and countries of the Third World in the period between the end of the Second World War and the collapse of the Soviet Union (USSR) in 1991.
Nigeria: A Case Study
Nigeria is an African country located on the Gulf of Guinea with many landmarks and wildlife reserves. She is blessed with arable land, natural resources and human capital. Nigeria, a third world country in Africa, was declared as the poverty capital of the world in 2018 in a report by the Brookings Institute, ahead of India. The nation just exceeded India with the largest rate of people living in extreme poverty.
In Nigeria, about 86.9 million people live in severe poverty, which is about 50% of its entire population. While the nation is smaller both geographically and in terms of population, it is failing at lowering the rates of poverty. This is partly due to the mismanagement of the oil business and the presence of corruption. Along with this, the nation is going through a population boom, which makes managing poverty rates more difficult.
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The World Poverty Clock (2023) has further confirmed Nigeria as the poverty headquarters of the World stating that about 71million people are living in extreme poverty in Nigeria today. One of the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals is to end extreme poverty by 2050. However, Nigeria’s poverty rates are currently going in the wrong direction. This has continued to slow down the development efforts and the ways the other nations of the world associates with her.
Factors Contributing to Nigeria's Challenges
Several factors contribute to the challenges Nigeria faces:
- Dependence on Oil: Before independence in 1960, Nigeria depended on Agriculture as her mainstay. However, when crude oil was discovered in Nigeria in the late 1950s, Nigeria began to earn high revenue from crude oil which became her major source of earning foreign exchange. Nigeria began to neglect agriculture and its products as areas of revenue earning, making her mono-economy in nature.
- High Rate of Unemployment: Unemployment is a major characteristic of the Nigerian economy and a factor contributing to poverty in Nigeria. There is a strong correlation between unemployment and poverty.
- Corruption: Corruption in Nigeria has become so pervasive to such an extent that no sector is free it. This has become a common act in Nigeria and it has destabilized the political system drastically. Government funds are being misappropriated on a daily basis by the leaders, who only put the interest of their family and friends at heart while ignoring the masses.
Poverty in Detail
The concept of poverty has been defined severally by many scholars and authorities at different time from different context and perspectives. In a simple form, it is seen as a state of having few material possessions or little income. Poverty further refers to lack of adequate financial resources such that individuals’ households and entire communities don’t have the means to subsist or acquire the basic necessities for a flourishing life.
Poverty could be evaluated from two angles, the absolute poverty compares income against the amount needed to meet basic personal needs, such as food, clothing, and shelter and the relative poverty which manifests when a person cannot meet a minimum level of living standards, compared to others in the same time and place.
Generally, poverty portents lack, deprivation and denial. The aggregate of individual poverty makes up the national poverty. In other words, when the large numbers of the populace are poor in a country, it therefore stands that the entire nation will be poor.
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National Development
National Development refers to the improvement of all aspects of the life of an individual and the nation. It is the capacity for a nation to enhance its citizen’s standard of living, which stands as an indicator of the nation’s level of development. It is a process of reconstruction and development in various dimensions of a nation and development of individuals in the nation which includes full growth of industries, agriculture, and education, social, religious and cultural institutions.
National development could be seen as the overall improvement of the welfare of the people especially the persons with the lowest income, the eradication of mass poverty with its correlates of illiteracy, disease and early death, changes in the composition of inputs that generally include shift in the underlying structure of production away from agricultural towards industrial activities.
Dependency Theory
The dependency theory connotes that resources flow from the poor countries to the wealthy countries thereby enriching the rich countries. It means that poor states are impoverished and the rich ones are enriched by the way the poor states are attached to the rich states. The theory simply states that the poor nations are poor because they continue to depend on the rich nations and that the poor states will continue to be poor except they delink from the rich nations.
Dependency theory is very appropriate to explain why Nigeria has been a poor country and classified as the poverty headquarters of the world. Nigeria as a country is poor because lacks productivity but depends on importations of many goods and services for her economy. The Nigeria economy is visibly underdeveloped and dependent with so many obstacles which has impeded on her development.
Least Developed Countries (LDCs)
There are currently 44 economies designated by the United Nations as the least developed countries (LDCs), entitling them to preferential market access, aid, special technical assistance, and capacity-building on technology among other concessions.
| Continent | Number of Countries | Countries |
|---|---|---|
| Africa | 33 | Angola, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Niger, Rwanda, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Togo, Uganda, United Republic of Tanzania, Zambia |
| Asia | 8 | Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Myanmar, Nepal, Timor-Leste, Yemen |
| Caribbean | 1 | Haiti |
| Pacific | 3 | Kiribati, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu |
The boundaries and names shown and the designations used on this map do not imply official endorsement or acceptance by the United Nations.
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