As world leaders prepare to attend the annual United Nations’ General Assembly in New York this month, one particularly important gathering will be the High Level Event on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) on September 25.
The MDGs are targets that world leaders set themselves at the turn of the millennium. By 2015, they pledged, extreme poverty will be halved, as well as hunger and chronic malnutrition. All primary-age children in the world will go to school and gender disparity in education be eliminated. Both sexes will have equal opportunities. The health, environment and living conditions of hundreds of millions of the world’s least-privileged people, notably women and children, will be improved. Indicators were agreed to measure progress.
To make it happen, richer countries committed themselves in many international agreements to a global partnership and to provide adequate financial and technical resources. Developing countries agreed to provide the leadership to prepare and implement plans to achieve measurable results. The New York meeting takes place just as the halfway mark to 2015 has been reached.
In July of this year the African Union released its status report on the implementation of the MDGs in Africa. The results were mixed. Too many Africans still live precariously, in poverty, without access to basic services and opportunities. But there was good news too.
About 30 countries have incorporated MDGs into their poverty-reduction strategies or national plans. Progress is being made across the continent in primary school enrolment and Africa is close to gender equality in primary school attendance. The number of women in government and parliaments is growing. Child survival rates have improved, though maternal mortality rates remain tragically high. Deaths from malaria are down and the number of people receiving antiretroviral treatment has increased dramatically.
These gains are truly remarkable given the odds stacked against many countries. Malawi is a poor, densely populated and landlocked country, the economy and people of which are dependent on a few primary crops, notably maize and tobacco, and on an increasingly unpredictable rainy season. It was ranked 167th of 171 countries in the UN’s 2007 human development index.
Yet Malawi has made significant progress towards achieving the MDGs, notably on child survival, primary school attendance and HIV/Aids. But the bedrock for progress for Malawi and many sub-Saharan African countries is increased food security and improved nutrition, without which neither individuals nor economies can be healthy or reach their full potential.
For a country that has faced repeated food crises for decades, including in 2005 when more than a third of the population was receiving food and other emergency support, the most remarkable feature has been the turnaround in maize production in the past three years. In 2005 the maize harvest was 45% less than the estimated national requirement. In 2006 and 2007 production exceeded the requirement by about 20% and 30% respectively. Success is attributable to good rains and a bold and controversial government decision in 2005, supported by the UN Development Programme, to spend the lion’s share of its modest agriculture budget on a voucher-based, targeted agricultural inputs subsidy scheme.
In Malawi progress on food security and on MDG achievement has been based on a winning combination: government leadership, coordinated support from development partners and a role for the private sector. Government committed itself four years ago to creating a stable macroeconomic climate. Inflation and interest rates have tumbled and investor confidence has increased. The government has also prepared long-term MDG-oriented national and sector development plans. Development partners committed themselves to provide harmonised and predictable support.
There are other lessons and successes to be harvested across the continent. Rwanda has the highest proportion of women parliamentarians in the world and its gender gap in primary education and in literacy is at zero. School enrolment is up in countries such as Tanzania, Ethiopia and Uganda, while 44% fewer children died between 2004 and 2006 in Kenya thanks to a tenfold increase in the number of children sleeping under insecticide-treated mosquito nets.
Dramatic progress on MDG achievement is possible, even in the most challenging circumstances. But for progress to be sustained, broadened and accelerated, the deal between developing and richer countries needs to be honoured. G8 and Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development countries need to fulfil promises to increase aid and to put Africa’s development at the heart of international agreements. Developing countries need sounder strategies to achieve critical goals in health, education, infrastructure development and food security.
We now need a timetable for delivery by all partners of the MDG deal. The key ingredient is political will to make it happen. This is what is on the table in New York.
Michael Keating was UN resident coordinator and UNDP resident representative in Malawi from 2004 until June 2008. He is now director of the Africa Progress Panel