Landlocked developing countries
The landlocked developing countries are developing countries that are landlocked. Due to the economic and other disadvantages suffered by such countries, the majority of landlocked countries are least developed countries, with inhabitants of these countries occupying the bottom billion tier of the world's population in terms of poverty. Outside of Europe, there is not a single highly developed landlocked country as measured by the Human Development Index, and nine of the twelve countries with the lowest HDI scores are landlocked. Landlocked European countries are exceptions in terms of development outcomes due to their close integration with the regional European market. Landlocked countries that rely on transoceanic trade usually suffer a cost of trade that is double that of their maritime neighbours. Landlocked countries experience economic growth 6% less than non-landlocked countries, holding other variables constant.
32 out of the world's 44 landlocked countries, including all the landlocked countries in Africa, Asia, and South America, have been classified as Landlocked Developing Countries by the United Nations. As of 2012, about 442.8 million people lived in these LLDCs.
UN-OHRLLS
The United Nations has an Office of the High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States. It mainly holds the view that high transport costs due to distance and terrain result in the erosion of competitive edge for exports from landlocked countries. In addition, it recognizes the constraints on landlocked countries to be mainly physical, including lack of direct access to the sea, isolation from world markets and high transit costs due to physical distance. It also attributes geographic remoteness as one of the most significant reasons why developing landlocked nations cannot alleviate themselves, while European landlocked cases are mostly developed because of short distances to the sea through well-developed countries. One other commonly cited factor is the administrative burdens associated with border crossings, as there is a heavy load of bureaucratic procedures, paperwork, custom charges, and most importantly, traffic delay due to border wait times, which affect delivery contracts. Delays and inefficiency compound geographically: thus a two- to three-week wait due to border customs between Uganda and Kenya makes it impossible to book ships ahead of time in Mombasa, furthering delivery contract delays. Despite these explanations, it is also important to consider the transit countries that neighbour LLDCs, from whose ports the goods of LLDCs are exported.Dependency problems
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. Just recently, it has been economically modeled that if the economic size of a transit country is increased by just 1%, a subsequent increase of at least 2% is experienced by the landlocked country, which shows that there is hope for LLDCs if the conditions of their transit neighbours are addressed. In fact, some LLDCs are seeing the brighter side of such a relationship, with the Central Asian nations geographic location between three BRICS nations 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
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. Further, Burundi's exports could not pass through Mozambique around the same time due to the Mozambican Civil War. Thus, Burundi had to export its goods using a 4500 km route, crossing several borders and changing transport modes, to reach the port of Durban in South Africa.Other African countries
- Mali had problems exporting goods in the 1990s as nearly all its transit neighbours were engaged in civil war around the same time: the Algerian civil war, the Sierra Leone civil war, the Guinea-Bissau civil war involving Guinea, the First Liberian Civil War, the Second Liberian Civil War and the First Ivorian Civil War. 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.
Central Asia