Ethiopia and Cape Verde are the only African countries on target to meet UN anti-poverty goals (2015 Målene, red.) because poor nations have not received support promised by richer ones, UN Development Program Administrator Helen Clark said Sunday after a trip to Africa.
During her trip to Africa, speaking to the annual meeting of UNDP, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Helen Clark said:
When the MDGs (2015 Målene) were signed up to in 2000, 2015 looked a long way away. Now the target is a mere six years away. Let not “Too Late” be the epitaph of the MDGs.
I believe it would be wrong now just to dismiss the MDGs as mere aspirational or stretch goals.
The MDGs are enormously important targets, the achievement of which would make a huge improvement to peoples lives – in lifting income, offering both opportunity through education and for better health status, empowering women, tackling deadly and debilitating diseases, nurturing our environment for current and future generations, and forming strong global partnerships for development.
In the middle of a global economic crisis, making progress on these goals is of course challenging. In fact we risk going backwards.
But if we drill down to the specific situation of any country and to evidence of progress and failure on specific MDGs, or we look at growth potential in new and emerging areas, we will find that dramatic progress is often possible.
That progress will depend on what kinds of policies nations pursue, their budget priorities, their ability to enact governance improvements, and investments in filling crucial capacity gaps.
We should not accept the projection into the future of a past dismal trend as some kind of iron law of nature.
Every year, indeed every day, policy makers can make changes which completely alter such a trajectory at national and sub-national levels. There are plenty of examples of that, including here in Africa.
In a few short weeks, the G8 has the opportunity again not only to reaffirm the commitments it made at Gleneagles to double ODA from 2004 levels by 2010, but also explicitly to commit to mobilize the resources needed to fund the Gleneagles Scenarios which are being developed for African countries.
If implemented, these scenarios would make a powerful difference to the ability of countries on this continent to achieve the MDGs.
Similarly it is to be hoped that the next meeting of the G20 in September might focus more attention on how to support low income countries through the global recession.
KRISEN OG AFRIKA
Earlier on, Helen Clark said on the implications of the financial crisis for Africa:
The global economic crisis has struck at the very time when economic growth has been getting real traction in much of Africa.
Between 2003 and 2008, gross domestic product in sub-Saharan Africa increased in real terms by more than five per cent annum, and at more than six per cent from 2004 to 2007.
Now, African economies face lower growth and contraction despite bearing no responsibility for the global crisis.
The recession adds to the stress which very high food and energy prices had already imposed on many countries. Concurrently, we face the huge climate change challenge, related to the worlds present unsustainable use of natural resources.
Drops in export, volatility in commodity prices, reduced flows of remittances (hjemsendelse af penge fra arbejdere i udlandet) and of investment all exact a heavy toll.
It should be noted that remittances in many countries currently exceed export earnings. While bilateral ODA to Africa was 26 billion US dollar in 2008, remittances from migrant workers to sub-Saharan Africa were about 20 billion. They are projected to drop by between four and eight per cent in 2009.
So, without action now to combat the crisis, progress on the MDGs would stall – or even reverse, she concluded.
Kilder: Verdensbanken og UNDPs websites
There is also a higher probability of the outbreak or recurrence of conflict during severe economic shocks.
