'Riches to Rags' the commodity dead-end

The cautionary tales of commodity dependence continue.In Pambazuka Khadija Sharife writes about Zambia's copper straitjacket:

Once perceived as an icon of progress in Africa thanks to wealth from its copper mines, today over 75 per cent of Zambia's population lives below the poverty line...Khadija Sharife recounts the country’s ‘riches to rags’ story – a story that is being repeated in former resource colonies across the continent, which although ‘politically liberated’ have ‘remained economically chained’.

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Even Russia's Medvedev rails against commodity dependence.