Albania went through the transition from communism thirty years ago, but many economic challenges remain to this day.

Rural areas have had a particularly difficult time, and some communities near the Montenegrin border face economic hardships that make surviving there difficult.

Several factors have kept Albania’s post-communist economy weighed down. Among them is a lack of support for rural areas, as farmers are often left in areas where the population is declining, while the number of consumers buying their produce also declines. That isn’t to say the entire economy has done poorly, in fact the truth is quite the contrary. Albania has gone from being among the poorest countries in Europe to a stable middle-income economy. According to the World Bank, the poverty rate in Albania was reduced from 25.4% in 2002 to 14.3% in 2012. The 2008 financial crisis halted growth, reduced employment, and slowed the rate at which poverty had been reducing. Despite this, the Albanian economy has been reforming and recovering, but inclusiveness in this economic growth is a long-standing problem that has yet to be addressed in many remote areas of the country.

For residents of Shkoder, a village on the border of Montenegro, these issues are more than present. Residents complain of government neglect, and in some cases they accuse the government of worse things than that. Shkoder suffers from the lowest per-capita income in Albania, and exporting produce is a serious challenge for local farmers. One farmer, Ahmet Suleymani, complained to Al Jazeera that when he tries to export his produce to Montenegro, which needs his produce, the Albanian authorities arrest him for smuggling even though the paperwork is all in order. Ahmet points out that it’s not the Montenegrin authorities stopping these exports from coming through, but his country’s own. Ahmet and many other residents believe that this is because Shkoder supports the opposition party. Over 30,000 people have left Shkoder to go abroad, and crime has run rampant as police haven’t enforced the law. This scene is particularly grim in Albania, but it highlights some of the economic and political challenges that remain.