The Central African Republic has the world’s lowest per capita income, but it is the world’s biggest buyer of weapons as a percentage of imports.
According to Ozy News, the Central African Republic has the world’s lowest per capita income, but it is the world’s biggest buyer of weapons as a percentage of imports.
The road map was precise. Devastated by a brutal civil war, the Central African Republic (CAR) decided in 2014 to restore its broken education system.
The country received international aid worth $65 million but said it was still $53 million short for its plan to hire teachers and rebuild schools by 2017.
It turns out the country had the money. It just chose instead to spend what it said was its education budget shortfall for three years — plus an additional $6 million — on one year of the war.
The CAR has the lowest per capita income — less than $2 a day — in the world. Two-thirds of the country’s population lives in poverty, according to its government. But the landlocked nation has emerged an unlikely leader in an arena usually dominated by emerging or established powers, and relatively wealthier nations: military imports.
According to the World Bank’s latest data:
“THE CAR IS AFRICA’S LARGEST IMPORTER OF MILITARY WEAPONS. IN 2015, IT SPENT $59 MILLION, OR 10 PERCENT OF ITS IMPORT BILL, ON WEAPONS, A HIGHER PROPORTION THAN ANY OTHER COUNTRY IN THE WORLD.
Such an arms budget for a country so poor is unusual, but the country has been racked by a six-year civil war. The government’s now effectively restricted to the country’s capital, Bangui, while 14 different militias control the rest of the territory.
“That a government that considers itself to be at war would be looking for opportunities to buy weapons” makes sense, says Yale anthropologist Louisa Lombard, whose research has focused on the CAR.
And an international community that’s tried and failed several times to intervene and curb the conflict is now acceding to the government’s requests for arms instead.
The CAR spends more on weapons than on anything else.
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