Although
Adam Smith and traditional thought hold that geography and transportation are the culprits for keeping LLDCs from realizing development gains, Faye, Sachs and Snow hold the argument that no matter the advancement of infrastructure or lack of geographic distance to a port, landlocked nations are still dependent on their neighbouring transit nations. Outlying this specific relationship of dependency, Faye et al. insist that though LLDCs vary across the board in terms of HDI index scores, LLDCs almost uniformly straddle at the bottom of HDI rankings in terms of region, suggesting a correlated dependency relationship of development for landlocked countries with their respective regions. In fact, HDI levels decrease as one moves inland along the major transit route that runs from the coast of Kenya, across the country before going through Uganda,
Rwanda and then finally
Burundi. In fact, some LLDCs are seeing the brighter side of such a relationship, with the Central Asian nations geographic location between three
BRICS nations (China,
Russia and
India) hungry for the region's oil and mineral wealth serving to boost economic development. The three major factors that LLDCs are dependent on their transit neighbours are dependence on transit infrastructure, dependence on political relations with neighbours, and dependence on internal peace and stability within transit neighbours.
Burundi is shown in blue. Its possible export routes were either dependent on infrastructure of transit neighbour Tanzania (yellow), or dependent on political relations with transit neighbour Kenya (orange), or dependent on internal stability of transit neighbour Mozambique (red). When all three routes were unavailable, Burundi had to rely on the port of Durban in South Africa (brown).
Burundi has relatively good internal road networks, but it cannot export its goods using the most direct route to the sea since the inland infrastructure of
Tanzania is poorly connected to the port of
Dar es Salaam. Thus Burundi relies on
Kenya's
port of Mombasa for export; but this route was severed briefly in the 1990s when political relations with Kenya deteriorated. the
Algerian civil war (1991–2002), the
Sierra Leone civil war (1991–2002), the
Guinea-Bissau civil war involving
Guinea (1999), the
First Liberian Civil War (1989–1997), the
Second Liberian Civil War (1999) and the
First Ivorian Civil War (2002–2007). The lone exception was
Ghana, which was under military rule but did not have an active civil war at the time. • The
Central African Republic's export routes are seasonal: in the rainy season Cameroon's roads are too poor to use; and during the dry season the
Democratic Republic of Congo's
Oubangui River water levels are too low for river travel. And though it is widely conceived that free trade can permit faster economic growth, Mongolia is now subjected to a new geopolitical game which concerns the traffic on its railway lines between China and Russia.
Russian Railways now effectively owns 50% of Mongolia's rail infrastructure, which could mean more efficient modernization and the laying of new rail lines, but in reality also translates into powerful leverage to pressure the government of Mongolia to concede unfair terms for license grants of coal, copper, and gold mines. Thus, it can be argued that these nations with extraordinary mineral wealth should pursue economic diversification.
Nepal Nepal is a landlocked country with extreme dependency on its transit neighbour
India. India does not have poor relations with Nepal, nor does it lack relevant transport infrastructure or internal stability. However, there have been two cases of economic blockades imposed by the
government of India on Nepal – the official 1989 blockade and the unofficial
2015 blockade – both of which left the nation in severe economic crisis. In the 1970s, Nepal suffered from large commodity concentration and a high geographic centralization in its export trade: over 98% of its exports were to India, and 90% of its imports came from India. As a result of all this, Nepal had a poor trade bargaining position. Because of these problems, and Nepal's inability to develop its own infant industries (as it could not compete with Indian manufactures) treaties were drafted in 1960 and 1971, with amendments to the equal tariffs conditions, and terms of trade have since progressed. ==Almaty Ministerial Conference==