Can Africa fulfill the Millennium Development Goals by 2015? That's a question that is often asked anytime there is a discussion about MDGs. It was on many lips during the celebration of the International Women's day on March 8. Behind the question of course is a lot of cynicism by the questioner (s). There is a generalized doubt that the MDGs, may not be met on schedule in a majority of African states. Official reports and anecdotal evidence suggest that at current pace even by 2050 the goals may still remain unmet by these states.

The situation is not helped by the fact that most of the reports available are usually aggregated. Hence the negative conclusion that Africa's progress is at best very slow and patchy. Like all generalizations and aggregated statistics they hide the specific, more positive picture of steady progress on a number of the goals in quite a few countries across Africa. It also panders to the fashionable Afro pessimism that caricatures events in Africa promoting embedded attitudes of 'Hopeless Africa'. 'Helpless people and continent' that needs the help and handout of everybody else except its own peoples and leaders.

The UN says the digital divide is narrowing, but Murali Shanmugavelan tells us to think twice about leaving the job to telecoms industry giants.

When I grew up in Madurai, the second largest city in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, there was only one private telephone line in a street of about 100 families. It took seven years for my father to get a phone thanks to a long waiting list and inadequate infrastructure. Today my parents have one landline and three mobile phones in a household of seven. India is now the world’s third largest telecoms market with more than 250 million telephones for a population of 1.1 billion.

Over the last decade many developing countries have witnessed a similar expansion. Telephones, computers, the internet, and satellite have connected millions of people who previously had little contact with the outside world. The number of mobile phone connections has overtaken fixed lines, and the trend is set to continue.

Private telecom firms have played a pivotal role by reducing calling costs and revamping payment packages. The invention of ‘pay-as-you-go’, which allows those without a credit history to own a mobile telephone, has given people with few means a chance to take part in the information revolution.

A recent report by the consultancy firm Intelecon predicts that 90 per cent of the global market will have access to a mobile phone operator by 2010. However, between two and five per cent of the world’s population (120 to 300 million people) is expected to be too unprofitable to benefit from these services. This digital underclass is likely to be concentrated in the world’s poorest countries.

Sub-Saharan Africa’s long-term development, including attainment of the MDGs and continued progress beyond 2015, depends on mobilizing domestic financial resources and channeling them to productive private and public investment. From roughly the mid 1980s to the mid 1990s, many of the countries in the region undertook financial liberalization in order to promote such an objective. This One Pager evaluates the outcomes by examining the experience of 19 countries that have liberalized (see Serieux 2008).

During 1965-1985, almost all African countries followed what orthodoxy now labels as policies of ‘financial repression’, i.e., maintaining (administered) low interest rates and directing cheap credit to certain enterprises and sectors in order to foster rapid growth. Between 1986 and 1995, many of these countries underwent a process of domestic financial liberalization, instituting market- determined deposit and lending rates, eliminating directed credit, creating more competitive conditions and reducing the flow of credit to the public sector.

America's foreign aid programs are controversial. Polls indicate most Americans want the United States to be a generous donor of foreign aid. At the same time, these Americans greatly overestimate how much help we send overseas.
Others are concerned that our foreign aid falls far short of the global commitments made in the Millennium Development Goals. And yet others say Western foreign assistance is focused more on "giving a man a fish" than on "teaching a man to fish."

To deal, in part, with this complexity, Congress moved in 2004 to create a panel which would recommend small and large changes to the structure of U.S. And their report is now available.

We are now almost at the mid-point of the 15-year period in which to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). And as we approach this mid-point, data are now becoming available that provide an indication of progress during the first third of this 15-year period. The results are, predictably, uneven in many areas of these Millennium Development Goals. It cannot be denied that since 2000, when world leaders endorsed the Millennium Declaration, we have seen some visible gains here and there, even in areas where the challenges are greatest.

These small achievements demonstrate that success is possible but that the Millennium Development Goals will be attained only if concerted additional action is taken immediately and sustained until 2015. All stakeholders need to fulfill, in their entirety, the commitment they made in the Millennium Declaration and subsequent pronouncements.

These results, these limited achievements highlight how much remains to be done and how much more could be accomplished if all concerned lived up fully to the commitments they have already made.

More generally, the lack of employment for young people, gender inequalities, rapid and unplanned urbanisation and high HIV prevalence are pervasive obstacles. We still have a lot of challenges that have to be addressed.

We still have unacceptably high numbers of women dying each year from treatable and preventable complications of pregnancy and childbirth. If current trends continue, the target of halving the proportion of underweight children will be missed, largely because of slow progress in this area. We are still losing many of our people from AIDS, and prevention measures are failing to keep pace with the growth of the epidemic.

A large percentage of our population lacks basic sanitation. In order to meet the Millennium Development Goals target, an additional large number of our people will need access to improved sanitation over the period 2008 to 2015. If the current trends continue, we are likely to miss the target.

And to some extent, these situations reflect the fact that the benefit of economic growth in our country have been unequally shared. As Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection director Fr Pete Henriot has correctly observed, the economic growth and single digit inflation our government talks about has only benefited the government, investors and not the ordinary Zambians. We have failed to provide employment opportunities to our youths.

In order to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, we will need to mobilise additional resources and target public investment that benefits the poor.

Clearly, achieving these goals is possible and rapid and large-scale progress is feasible. But this progress is only possible when strong government leadership is in place and appropriate policies and strategies that effectively target the needs of the poor are combined with adequate financial and technical support from the international community.

And during the mid-point year, the international community needs to support the preparation of these strategies and to accelerate implementation of the Millennium Development Goals. In general, strategies should adopt a wide-ranging approach that seeks to achieve pro-poor economic growth, including through the creation of a large number of opportunities for decent work.

This, in turn, will require comprehensive programmes for human development, particularly on education and health, as well as building productive capacity and improved physical infrastructure. And enhanced public accountability is necessary to support all these efforts.

Success in achieving the Millennium Development Goals cannot be achieved by us alone without the assistance and cooperation of developed countries. Developed countries need to deliver fully on long-standing commitments to achieve the official development assistance target of 0.7 per cent of Gross National Income by 2015.

It requires, in particular, the Group of Eight industrial nations to live up to their 2005 pledge to double aid to our countries by 2010 and the European Union member states to allocate 0.7 per cent of their Gross National Income to official development assistance by 2015.

Aid has to be improved by ensuring that assistance is aligned with the policies we have adopted, and that flows are continuous, predictable and assured and not tied to all sorts of things with continually shifting goalposts.

We say all this because since their adoption by all United Nations member states in 2000, the Millennium Declaration and the Millennium Development Goals have become a universal framework for development and a means for developing countries and their development partners to work together in pursuit of a shared future for all.

And as we have already pointed out, there have been some gains, and success is still possible in many areas. But all these also point to how much remains to be done. There is a clear need for our political leaders to take urgent and concerted action, or the great majority of our people will not realise the basic promises of the Millennium Development Goals in their lives.

The Millennium Development Goals are still achievable if we act now. This will require inclusive sound governance, increased public investment economic growth, enhanced productive capacity, and the creation of decent work.

The successes we have recorded so far in some areas, demonstrate that rapid and large-scale progress towards the Millennium Development Goals is feasible if we combine strong government leadership, food policies and practical strategies for scaling up public investments in vital areas with adequate financial and technical support from the international community.

To achieve the goals, we need to own the strategies and our budgets must be aligned with them. This must be backed up by adequate financing within the global partnership for development and its framework for mutual accountability.

We don’t need new promises anymore. It is imperative that all stakeholders meet, in their entirety, the commitments already made in the Millennium Declaration, the 2002 Monterrey Conference on Financing for Development, and the 2005 World Summit.

Clearly, Zambia needs to put more effort in improving social amenities if we are to attain the Millennium Development Goals by 2015. At the rate we are going, it is not possible and this is worrisome. If things can be improved now, then we will see an indicator for attaining the Millennium Development Goals.

With less than 1% of Africans able to access a broadband connection, Intel's chairman Craig Barrett is advocating for a wireless solution to Africa's long stagnating connectivity problems.

While computer access and Internet connections stagnates in Africa, mobile phone penetration is expanding exponentially. Africa’s mobile phone growth rate has been the highest of any region over the past 5 years, averaging yearly increases of almost 25%.

Mr Barrett, who is in Africa as part of the Intel World Ahead programme, said: "In every African country, except some of the more established economies, cell phones vastly outnumber fixed line phones.

Many African NGOs are now beginning to utilize mobile phones in their campaning work. In Gugulethu a small city near Cape Town, an experimental SMS-based software program called Cell-Life is being used to help administer antiretroviral drugs to people with HIV/AIDS. Two doctors and one nurse keep in contact with one another and their 500 patients via text messages sent from local counselors  "The doctors don't get to see as many patients as they would like," Anand said. "This allows them to pinpoint patients who aren't doing well. And, of course, monitor those patients that are benefiting from drug therapy."  (http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/12/06/wireless06_ed3_.php).

The Ugandan government announced it will pay a $10 monthly allowance to the country’s “chronically poor.” Any Ugandan who was born, raised or has lived in poverty all their life will be eligible, officials said in a recent BBC article.

On the surface, the announcement is positive. Indeed, optimists will argue that though the amount is small, it is a small step towards ensuring that families are able to meet some of their basic needs. Some will even argue that the handouts will give the will give the poor a sense of hope because as the saying goes “a bird in hand is worth two in the bush.”

One must commend the Uganda government for the bold gesture taken. This gesture will bolster the wonderful efforts made in the area of Universal Primary School which has led to unprecedented school enrollment and the narrowing of the access disparities in regards to the ratio of boys to girls a key pointer for gender equality. The halting and reverse on the rates of HIV/AIDS has been a commendable effort and a point to be emulated by other African countries.

If the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were a person, they would be the teenager who complains that no one understands her.  The latest example of people not getting what the MDGs are about is Bunker Roy’s article in the American.  Don’t get me wrong- Roy makes very good points, and if the MDGs are as he understands them, he would be right to criticize them.  The problem is that lots of people seem to think the MDGs equal a big gush of aid and Millennium Villages.

I think it’s great that Roy is focused on community empowerment, rural development, practical solutions coming from the poor themselves.  He’s appropriately skeptical of so-called experts parachuting in to tell people the solutions to their problems. 

To me, the beauty of the MDGs is in their framework- that every country, every person has a role to play.  Poor countries have to fight corruption, put the needs of the poor first, give voice to the grassroots.  But rich countries can help by reforming trade rules and yes, by aid.  Countries need help paying the salaries of teachers, nurses, agricultural extension workers.  They need outside resources to pay for AIDS drugs, to build roads and sanitation systems.

What is most exciting about the MDGs is the grassroots citizen movement they have sparked.  Across the world, there are anti-poverty MDG campaigns made up of citizen organizers, farmers, young people, teachers, clergy.  They are working to take the MDGs to the people, to empower them to demand that their government do right by them.  In South-South collaboration, they are sharing ideas and are part of the Global Call to Action against Poverty.  They are focused most on attacking corruption, government indifference, bad policies, but they also recognize that their countries can’t go it alone- they need trading opportunities and they need development aid that supports local priorities and empowers local people.  (Admittedly, way too much aid empowers donor agencies and consultants, rather than people, but MDG campaigns are tackling that issue too.)  The UN’s Millennium Campaign’s mission to support and work with these groups shows that the UN’s work on the MDGs is about a lot more than villages, even if the day to day work of empowering people doesn’t get the media and celebrity attention that a showcase village does.