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Achieving the MDGs in Africa: a race against time.

Article Excerpt
African leaders, like other leaders from the developing world, with the support of the international community, embarked on a marathon race in 2000. Singularly and collectively, they entered a race against poverty, underdevelopment and deprivation by adopting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as the framework agenda for development. They vowed to do all in their stead to win this race. By doing so, they were making a promise to put in place measures to free their citizens from the dehumanizing conditions of poverty.

Importantly, the leaders agreed to a common framework for monitoring and reporting progress towards specified time-bound targets. As a result of this commitment, the MDGs are being viewed not only as an integral part of national, social and economic development plans and programmes but also shaping the political agenda. Although there are mixed results, most of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa are not likely to achieve the MDGs. While progress is encouraging in countries that have implemented sound economic policies and improved their systems of governance, in others where policy improvements have yet to be secured and those still trapped in conflict, progress is doubtful.

Between 1990--the baseline year for measuring progress towards the MDGs--and 2004, the proportion of people living on less than one dollar a day in Africa decreased from 46.8 to 41.1 per cent. Thus, there is a need for all actors to redouble their efforts if the 50-per-cent reduction...

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