For too long, Africa has remained the backwater of development.

We simply can't remain here in this backwater until the war is over, Mr. Allnut.

It would be wrong, of course, to suggest that Europe has suddenly become a political backwater.

If you hadn't been out fishing in a rowboat in some godforsaken backwater... you'd have known about it.

Dentistry might seem and I think it is many dentists would have to acknowledge it's somewhat of a mundane backwater of medicine.

To dismiss the FMLN s historical achievement as simply an act of justice or a foreseeable event in a tiny backwater would be reckless.

Originally a backwater of fishing villages, quarries and dockyards, the Eastern District is now mostly residential, with some industrial areas and several large shopping malls.

Russian Polish suspicions and disagreements date back to the sixteenth century, when Poland was the far greater power indeed, the Grand Duchy of Moscow was a backwater.

He remembered the impoverished backwater that Singapore was in the 1920 s, and now he saw the gleaming city that free enterprise together with Lee Kwan Yew s quasi authoritarian leadership had wrought.

Lhasa, a sleepy, rather grubby backwater only 30 years ago, is now a city of huge public squares, shopping centers, and high rise buildings, connected to the rest of China with a high speed railway line.

1001 1200 A.D. (11th and 12th centuries) Even by the year 1000, western Europe remained a backwater compared to other world regions while the population in Constantinople exceeded 300,000, Rome had mere 35,000 inhabitants and Paris only 20,000.

It would be wrong, of course, to suggest that Europe has suddenly become a political backwater. But it is true that Europeans need to take a long, hard look at themselves and at where they ll be in 40 years if current trends continue.