If development in Africa continues in a business as usual manner, sub-Saharan Africa will reach the UN Millennium Development Goal of reducing child mortality not by 2015 as targeted but a century later, a study says.
That means 28 million children will die, who could have been saved if the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) had been achieved by 2015, IPS reports.
– These numbers should serve as a wake up call for G8 leaders, Kevin Watkins, director of the Human Development Report produced by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) told a meeting in Berlin. The new report analyses trends on different indicators like child mortality, poverty, and education, and compares those to the targets set by the MDGs.
Development experts say that if the goals are to be reached, it is not only crucial that the G8 leaders increase funding for development activities, but that they offer fairer trade, and relief of the heavy debt burden.
Leaders went some way towards that end by offering 100 percent debt cancellation of the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries at a meeting of finance ministers in London earlier this month.
World leaders had agreed the Millennium Development Goals in 2000. These set concrete development targets to be achieved by 2015, including reduction of child mortality by two-thirds, halting the spread of HIV/AIDS, promoting gender equality and achieving universal primary education.
– Business as usual will carry a high price in terms of lost lives and lost human potential for Africa, said Watkins. The figures he presented were a trend that could be changed through national policies and effective international cooperation, he added.
But if the trends continue, 19 million children will still be out of school by 2015 in sub-Saharan Africa, the report says. The region accounts for 37 percent of the 115 million children who do not go to school, but its share is expected to rise.
Some countries like Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda have made progress in enrolment, but completion rates lag far behind, according to the study.
The Group of Eight (G8) includes the seven most industrialised nations – Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States – plus Russia. Leaders from these countries meet for a summit July 8th in the Scottish town Gleneagles. Many groups are seeking critical decisions to support development at the summit and in advance of it.
Tilmann Bruck, development expert at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) sees four steps the G8 leaders should take: increasing development aid, providing debt relief, agreeing fair trade arrangements, and ending conflicts.
– Those are several construction sites, but they are complementary, he told IPS, adding: – You cannot choose what you want to do.
Bruck argued that for a reduction of child mortality and an increase in the number of children attending school, it was crucial that their parents had a job so that they could afford health services and sending their children to school.
But the industrialised nations do not give fair access to their markets, either through applying regulations or by subsidising their products.
– If we offer products on the world market at prices that are far below production costs in Africa, African farmers will not be able to sell their products, Bruck said.
He pointed out that nearly half of the European Unions budget was agricultural subsidies, and cutting this would make for much better development assistance. But French President Jacques Chirac said last week that he was not willing to accept any changes in EU agricultural subsidies.
The goal of halving extreme poverty, measured by the number of people living on less than a dollar a day may be achieved but only because of the extraordinary economic growth of India and China, the new report says.
Sub-Saharan Africa would miss the target by a wide 219 million more than today.
It also means that sub-Saharan Africas share of global poverty would climb from 29 percent to 53 percent.
Kilde: The Push Journal
