[Comment] Too Early to Gauge If MDGs Will Be Met

from All Africa

Business Daily (Nairobi)

By Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem

Can Africa fulfil the MDGs by 2015? That's a question that is often asked anytime there is a discussion about millennium development goals. It was on many lips during the celebration of the International Women's Day this month. Behind the question of course is a lot of cynicism by the questioner(s).

There is a generalised doubt that the goals may not be met on schedule in a majority of African states. Official reports and anecdotal evidence suggest that at the 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 is that Africa's progress is at best very slow and patchy. Like all generalisations 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'. A 'helpless people and continent' that needs the help and handout of everybody else except its own peoples and leaders.

The truth is mostly to the contrary but 'good stories' are boring, they do not make headlines. Without bad stories from Africa how can the hordes of humanitarian agencies and organisations, local and foreign, who operate as latter day missionaries or mercy mercenaries make their fund raising successful?

How can the compassion industry survive without the back drop of hungry children, diseased mothers and other suffering Africans? It is rather late in the day to be asking if Africa can meet the goals or not. Still more pointless are the criticisms of the goals as being too minimal.

All of them are more than seven years out of date. We are half way through and those questions are unhelpful especially among campaigners who are committed to holding their governments to account for these commitments.

The problem with asking the wrong questions is that you get the wrong answers that may divert you from the tasks in hand. A more proactive way of looking at this is to ask what can be done to fill the obvious gaps that still exist that may prevent countries from meeting the goals. The desirability of the goals is no longer debatable.

Meeting them will not hurt anyone. If you can half poverty nobody will stop you from eradicating it. Answering the more proactive type of questions also requires one to look at the progress that has been achieved instead of just looking for the challenges.

Tajudeen is deputy Director, Africa - UN Millennium Campaign.