Millennium Development Goals- Further and Faster

Last week’s Guardian news story on UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s role in a post 2015 Millennium Development Goal (MDG) committee, highlighted the importance of making a no-holds-barred push to meet the current MDG targets, in Africa and elsewhere. While many African countries have registered significant advances during the past decade, overall the continent will miss 2015 goals by a wide margin at the current rate.

A key reason for this is that MDG progress is being constrained by inequality. When assessing nations, we tend to focus too much on economic growth at the expense of social development, rule of law and respect for human rights.  Renewed commitment to meeting MDG targets is therefore crucial. Indeed, failure to accelerate progress towards the MDGs would diminish the credibility of any post-2015 commitments. 

Recent data from the World Bank shows that the share of Africans living on less than $1.25 a day has fallen, however that still leaves 386 million living in extreme poverty. Africa’s wealth disparities are among the biggest in the world and the continent accounts for a rising share of world poverty, in spite of a decade of impressive economic growth.

Results are mixed as well for other MDG targets. Compared with a decade ago, Africa’s children are less likely to die before their fifth birthday, women are less likely to die from complications of pregnancy or in childbirth, and more children are getting into school.

But an estimated 35 per cent of Africa’s children suffer from stunting. This figure is deeply disturbing given that malnutrition is associated with over one third of child deaths. Thirty million African children are out of school, improvement in school completion rates has slowed and far too many children are unable to meet the most basic learning achievement standards. The region is home to over 40 per cent of the 783 million people globally lacking access to improved sources of safe drinking water and decline in maternal death rates lags behind other developing regions.

The challenge for Africa is to harness economic growth to more equitable opportunities and income distribution. Indeed, a wealth of evidence is now showing that greater equity can boost growth and strengthen the rate at which growth converts into less poverty. Conversely, high levels of inequality act as a brake on growth, limiting the potential for development of markets and investment.

Recent advances in school enrolment, child survival rates, and combating infectious disease, demonstrate what is possible when good policies combine with effective political leadership and consistent international partnerships. Over the last 10 years there has been a massive investment to combat malaria, tuberculosis and HIV AIDS and the results are plain to see – a 47 per cent coverage increase in anti-retroviral therapy (ART) and a decline by one-third in the number of malaria deaths since the end of the 1990s (WHO World Malaria Report, 2011). These examples illustrate the critical role of international aid in fulfilling the MDG compact between African Governments and partners.

As noted by Myles Wickstead of the Commission for Africa - “The Millennium Development Goals – What next, Mr Cameron?” - meeting the 2015 MDGs is part of a larger commitment to achieving widespread poverty reduction and strengthening the foundation for sustainable development in Africa.

This can only happen through an immediate and concerted push by African governments and international partners to meet the 2015 targets by narrowing inequalities. Not every country in Africa can reach every target – but every country can go further and faster.

The above themes are discussed at length in the 2012 Africa Progress Panel Report, which will be launched at the World Economic Forum in Addis Ababa in May 2012.

*APP bi-weekly editorial as featured on allafrica.com.