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The Economic Geography of "Left Behind" Places
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Economic Development in Nigeria
In this course, Professor Sir Paul Collier (University of Oxford) explores economic development in Nigeria, focusing on the negative effects of oil on the country’s politics and economy. In the first lecture, we introduce Professor Collier’s recent book Left Behind: A New Economics for Neglected Places (2024), which discusses patterns of inequality and how poorer areas can “catch up” with wealthier ones. The second lecture then outlines the historical development of the Nigerian state and some key aspects of its human geography. In the third lecture, we think about how the discovery of oil contributed to the outbreak of the Nigerian Civil War in 1967. The fourth lecture considers the negative effects of oil on the Nigerian economy, framing this around the concept of “Dutch disease”. In the fifth and sixth lectures, we look at how oil has shaped politics in Nigeria, with particular attention given to the issue of corruption. We conclude with a seventh lecture on economic reform in Nigeria, emphasising the efforts of former Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala to control oil revenue expenditures and tackle corruption.
The Economic Geography of "Left Behind" Places
In this lecture, we think about some of the key insights from Professor Collier’s recent book Left Behind: A New Economics for Neglected Places (2024). We focus on: (i) growing regional inequality in the UK, particularly with regard to economic disparities between parts of England and Scotland; (ii) differences in young people’s life chances based on the areas in which they live, measured by their likelihood of having decent employment by 28; (iii) the focus of Left Behind on finding pragmatic solutions to help poorer areas “catch up” with wealthier ones.
Oh, I'm sorry.
00:00:07I was lost in admiration of my own book,
00:00:09which has just come out.
00:00:14It's, it's the first day of July, and,
00:00:17and it's just got, got reviewed,
00:00:21fortunately, very favorably,
00:00:24as a must read for the new incoming Labour government,
00:00:26which is nice to read.
00:00:31I didn't write it for the new Labour government.
00:00:34I read it,
00:00:37for sixteen year olds.
00:00:39I'm Paul Collier.
00:00:41I'm professor of economics and public policy at Oxford
00:00:43University.
00:00:47And so in the end,
00:00:48it's got to be a a piece of fancy, clever economics,
00:00:51but it's also got to be readable.
00:00:55I've written it so that my kids of sixteen and seventeen can
00:00:58read it on a beach,
00:01:02and I already know kids who have read it on a beach.
00:01:04It's fun.
00:01:08But it is, in the end, serious economics because in the end,
00:01:10I'm a serious economist at Oxford University.
00:01:15So what's let me tell you a little bit about the economic
00:01:21geography that's in Left Behind.
00:01:24And it's about places
00:01:28around the country, around the world
00:01:30that have fallen behind.
00:01:33For example, many of the regions of England
00:01:36and the west of Scotland have fallen behind
00:01:41much more prosperous parts of England such as the southeast
00:01:46or the Edinburgh, Dundee,
00:01:50coastal stretch of Scotland.
00:01:53So, this is written
00:01:55partly for the people in prosperous places
00:01:58to wake up and realize that other places
00:02:02have avoidably,
00:02:06needlessly fallen way behind because
00:02:08they've been very badly neglected.
00:02:12And it's the responsibility
00:02:15of all young people to become aware of how fortunate
00:02:17the lucky few are,
00:02:23who are growing up in very prosperous places,
00:02:25and how avoidably unfortunate,
00:02:29the many people in communities around Britain and around the world,
00:02:34whose life chances are so much worse.
00:02:40One of the things I measure in Left Behind is indeed life
00:02:44chances of kids aged sixteen
00:02:48or so.
00:02:54Their life chances of getting into a decent job at the
00:02:56age of twenty eight.
00:03:00So the passage from being somebody like you in a school
00:03:03to what you'll be when you're twenty eight.
00:03:08And the life chances of kids in Britain are
00:03:11about as unequal as anywhere in Europe,
00:03:16and that's shameful.
00:03:22If you start in the right place with born in the the
00:03:24right part of the country, the right neighborhood,
00:03:28to the right sort of parents,
00:03:32you'll you've got it made.
00:03:35If you're born in the wrong part of the country with the
00:03:38wrong sort of parents,
00:03:41you've got very poor chances.
00:03:44There's a personal tinge to the book because although I'm fancy
00:03:48now, believe it or not,
00:03:52I'm not only a professor, I've got a knighthood.
00:03:55But, I didn't want I didn't start like that.
00:03:58I I both my parents left school when they were twelve,
00:04:02and I grew up in Sheffield,
00:04:05which is now the poorest city in England.
00:04:06And so I'm very conscious of the the grim fate
00:04:09of people born like me.
00:04:15I was vanishingly lucky,
00:04:17and most people with my abilities
00:04:21were not vanishingly lucky, and then they just languish.
00:04:24So partly, Left Behind is a pretty angry book,
00:04:28about these inequalities of life chances,
00:04:33not just in Britain, but in many parts of the world.
00:04:36But it's also more hopeful book because it shows
00:04:40how poorer regions and poorer
00:04:45countries for that matter can catch up.
00:04:48And so it's, in the end,
00:04:51a positive pragmatic book on this is the way that
00:04:53a poor place, a poor city,
00:04:59or a poor region can catch up.
00:05:01And that's the agenda,
00:05:04of the book.
00:05:06And I hope it becomes your agenda,
00:05:08as well because,
00:05:12I'm an old guy.
00:05:15For example, I really don't understand social media.
00:05:16And, you know, and by the time
00:05:20you're twenty eight, I'll probably be dead.
00:05:23Right?
00:05:26But you'll be twenty eight.
00:05:27You'll be coming up to the point where you can either make
00:05:28a difference to society or just look after yourself.
00:05:32If people like you just decide, well,
00:05:39I'll just look after myself,
00:05:42then Britain will stay a bitterly divided society,
00:05:44bitterly unequal chances.
00:05:50If people like you actually take to social media,
00:05:52which you know better than anybody older than you,
00:05:57you can start making a difference right now,
00:06:02And by the time you're twenty eight,
00:06:06you can look back on life and say, yeah,
00:06:08I'm making a difference.
00:06:13So that's the message I've left behind. Now what am I gonna do?
00:06:15I'm going to look at one country
00:06:20which has fallen very badly behind.
00:06:23That country is Nigeria.
00:06:26And I'm going to try and explain to you
00:06:28why Nigeria has fallen behind despite the fact that Nigerians
00:06:31are a fantastic bunch of people.
00:06:37
Cite this Lecture
APA style
Collier, P. (2024, October 22). Economic Development in Nigeria - The Economic Geography of "Left Behind" Places [Video]. MASSOLIT. https://massolit.io/courses/economic-development-in-nigeria
MLA style
Collier, P. "Economic Development in Nigeria – The Economic Geography of "Left Behind" Places ." MASSOLIT, uploaded by MASSOLIT, 22 Oct 2024, https://massolit.io/courses/economic-development-in-nigeria