The End of Poverty Documentary Critical Analysis
The End of Poverty documentary shows that global poverty has not risen by mistake, but was planned. Globally, most of the people living in developing nations still starve because they cannot afford enough nutritious food. According to Philip Diaz in this film, the majority of individuals in the developing nations live below a dollar every day (“End of Poverty?”). This means that they cannot afford better healthcare, clothing, better housing, food, and education. The film digs deep into the root causes of global poverty and presents various thoughts on what should be done to ensure that those living in the poor economic regions are uplifted and can survive as those in the developed nations (“End of Poverty?”). Based on the film, developed nations must understand that they are the root causes of increased poverty levels in the developing nations and that solving the poverty problem in these developing regions requires a multifaceted approach.
The first important idea that that struck the most is that through slavery, most of the developed countries acquired the human capital from the developing continents like Africa. Diaz showed that during the industrial revolution in Europe and America, the demand for free labor arose. Slavery, therefore, became a lucrative business where strong and youthful Africans would be driven away from their homes and shipped across the seas and oceans to offer free labor in various plantations across the globe (“End of Poverty?”). According to this film, this is one of the onsets of poverty in developing regions such as Africa. The continent was robbed of its competent manpower through force and brutal governance (“End of Poverty?”). It is a crucial point of view that everyone should think about. Most of the rich nations became powerful and wealthier because of the free labor that they obtained from slaves (“End of Poverty?”). As mentioned by Diaz, as one walks across the globe, several historical buildings and cities were built by the slaves. Most of these cities and buildings such as museum generate billions of dollars monthly, which drive up the economic growth of the developed nations.
Additionally, the concept of regional conquest through colonization is another important issue covered in the film. Most of the currently developed nations colonized the developing states due to several reasons. One such reason was to obtain crucial natural resources such as crude oil, gold, diamond, timber, and fertile soil to set up their agricultural activities (“End of Poverty?”). As all these happened, the colonizers amassed the natural wealth from the developing nations. The industrialized nations, therefore, became wealthy, partly by extracting crucial resources from developing regions. The acquired natural resources were transported back to their nations where they used them to manufacture finished products (“End of Poverty?”). Such finished products were later on sold back to the poor nations where there was a ready market for them. It is evident from the film that most of the developing nations, therefore, lost the required natural resources to the developed nations. Reasons for extreme poverty in most of the developing nations are, therefore, blamed on the developed nations which robbed them of production resources.
The film also captured the corrupt practices of most of the local politicians in the developing countries. It is interesting how local politicians take huge development loans from the world bank and various international financial institutions and then loot most of it. As evident from the video, most of the projects are awarded to corrupt companies that are more interested in stealing most of the allocated funds (“End of Poverty?”). They corrupt contractors, therefore, charge exorbitant prices for their services and use little proportions of the given funds to construct the infrastructural facilities as most of the funds are kept unused. Final projects are often incomplete and unable to pay back the borrowed loan from the world bank and other financial institutions (“End of Poverty?”). Such developing nations are, therefore, trapped into big debts whereby they use a large percentage of their taxes to pay the loans rather than development projects. From this perspective, the cause of poverty in the developing nations is partly attributed to the failed governance systems and incompetent politicians in such states.
Neo-colonization is an additional crucial concept highlighted in the film. The video shows how most of the developing nations still depend on the developed countries for most of their development resources and financial aids (“End of Poverty?”). The developed nations, on the other hand, use financial aids as a strategy to get access to the developing nations to amass most of their natural resources.
Overall, The End of Poverty Film provides a detailed account of the causes of poverty in the developing nations, and largely accuses the developed countries of such poor economic states. Right from slavery, colonization, neo-colonization, and many more unethical practices, the developed countries are still considered the main cause of poverty in the developing world. The majority of people living in developing nations lack access to nutritious food, better healthcare, housing, and education. Such factors put them at risk of high illiteracy, food insecurity, and homelessness.
Works Cited
“The End of Poverty? – Vídeo Dailymotion.” Dailymotion, 2014, www.dailymotion.com/video/x22eynh. Accessed 8 Mar. 2020.
