Essay On Swaziland

1085 Words3 Pages

Sandile Innocent Dlamini
Mr Asante
African Studies
13 November 2014
The world remaining absolute poor monarchy of the world.
Swaziland is one the last remaining absolute monarchies of the world. A landlocked mountainous country, found between South Africa and Mozambique. A country with a meagre population of 1.2 million (UN, 2012). It is a country that is well known of its richness in culture and tradition - that attracts thousands of people across the globe to have a taste of its cultural beauty. Swaziland is endowed with iron, hydropower, coal and forestry. In addition, it has a small gold and diamond deposits. Swaziland has an excellent soil for sugar cane cultivation which makes it to be the leading export of the country. Subsistence agriculture employs about 70% of the populations because of the favourable weather conditions of the country. Indeed, Swaziland has a diverse economy and comparative advantages to its neighbouring countries. However, Swaziland average Gross Domestic Product is lower than most of the Sub-Saharan countries irrespective of its
It is clear that there is a negative relationship between HIV/AIDS and growth. HIV/AIDS affects the labour force, it lowers efficiency and productivity and lastly, savings and investment. It is evident that HIV/AIDS had contributed to the downturn of economic growth of Swaziland. This pandemic affected the drivers of economic growth mainly, the foreign direct investment and loss of labour. Due to lower productivity as a result of HIV/AIDS, there is a fall in both private and public savings. A low rate of return on capital discourage Foreign Direct Investment (Haacker, 2003). In addition, HIV/AIDS deter investors as it increased the risk of investing in Swaziland. In 2002, Isaksen et al. (2002) explained how a Taiwanese firm chose Lesotho instead of Swaziland due to the later having high HIV/AIDS

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