When countries do not ascend the ladder of industrialization this is the result.Patrick McGroarty and Joe Parkinson in the WSJ:
...Zambia—A decade long commodity boom brought sleek shopping malls, tidy brick homes and dozens of private schools to this palm-pocked mining town in the heart of Africa.
The population doubled and incomes soared as record copper prices and a flood of Chinese investment and workers transformed a region bordering war-ravaged Congo into a beacon for Africa’s rising middle class.
Now the global forces that propelled Kitwe’s rise have reversed, fomenting an economic and social crisis that has interrupted dreams of greater prosperity across Zambia’s copper belt and exposed the fragility of Africa’s commodity-fueled growth model...[more]