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Global Leaders Meet to Discuss Millennium Development Goals and Africa
Category: Development
Thursday, March 13, 2008
International development leaders are convening this week at the UN Headquarter in New York to discuss ways to accelerate Africa’s progress on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The MDG Africa Steering Group was established last September in response to Africa’s poor MDG performance. Preliminary data suggest that while the continent has made significant strides forward in governance, public health, and poverty eradication, it remains off-track to meet the goals by 2015.
At a February Brookings Institution event, William Easterly presented his working paper, “How the Millennium Development Goals are Unfair to Africa.” The paper argues that arbitrarily selected MDG benchmarks have destined Africa to failure. When compared historically to other regions of the world, Africa’s current rate of economic development is impressive. The MDGs should account for this fact and adjust their benchmarks accordingly. Instead, the crafters of the MGDs have chosen to portray the continent as a perpetual failure that is incapable of advancing without donor intervention. “The negative picture matters because it is demoralizing to African leaders and activists, and because it might have real consequences for things like private foreign investment.”
The MDG Africa steering group is chaired by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and includes Donald Kaberuka of the African Development Bank, Alpha Oumar Konaré of the African Union, Robert Zoellick of the World Bank, Louis Michel of the European Commission, Dominique Strauss-Kahn of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Angel Gurría of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The General Assembly also agreed to convene a high-level meeting in September to discuss how to better meet Africa’s development needs and assist the continent in achieving the MDGs on schedule.
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