Africa's land-locked countries: a study of dependency relations
Land-locked countries are over-represented among the group of least developed countries in Africa. Compared to Africa's coastal states, they are faced with three serious handicaps: absence of seaports, long trade routes to the coast, and dependence
on coastal states for transit. Relative location can contribute significantly to the vulnerability and weak bargaining position of African land-locked countries, and these factors, help explain their relative backwardness. Because Third World land-locked
countries generally occupy à lower position in the global dominance structure than do Third World coastal states, it seems advisable that geographers incorporate the distinction between land-locked and coastal states in their center-periphery models.