Assessing Progress in Africa toward the Millennium Development Goals - MDG Report 2011

This report continues the tradition of excellent collaboration among the Pan African institutions – the African Union Commission (AUC), the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), the African Development Bank (AfDB), and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). It provides the latest update on Africa’s progress towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), following the landmark September 2010 High Level Panel event. This event noted that the global achievement of the MDGs by 2015 is still possible through strengthened international partnership, closer collaboration between national authorities and development partners, and committed political will at the national level.

The report notes that progress toward the MDGs is continuing, but that the food, fuel, and financial crises over the past few years, coupled with the instability in North Africa in 2011, may impact on the pace of advancement. This calls for efforts to be redoubled to preserve gains and ensure success.

In particular, declines in labor productivity, increasing youth unemployment, and rising numbers of working poor are worrisome trends for the continent.  Indeed, the recent political developments in North Africa and the Middle East are a wake-up call both for Africa and other global regions on the need for a more inclusive and equitable approach to growth.

The rising numbers of the working poor should also remind us that the essence of job creation is to provide a decent living wage and not simply a wage. Furthermore, the disproportionate representation of women among the ranks of the working poor calls for more concerted efforts to address the gender imbalance in the workforce, focusing not only on the share of female employees but on their distribution across the broad spectrum of occupational and skills categories.

The report underscores that the MDGs are closely interlinked, hence the need for an integrated approach to accelerate their achievement. To this end, it is imperative that policymakers prioritize those interventions that will have the greatest leverage or cascading effects on a wider range of indicators. For instance, we know that gender empowerment, education, poverty, and health are inextricably linked. We must therefore exploit these and other relationships to sharpen the strategic focus of our interventions.

Monitoring is central to assessing performance on the MDGs. Effective monitoring requires more substantial investments in data collection, analysis, and dissemination than is currently the case in Africa.  Improved data coverage and quality, particularly at subnational levels, are critical for unmasking intra-country variations on MDGs performance and in identifying pockets of vulnerability as a basis for targeted interventions. Indeed, this report continues to observe considerable variations in MDGs performance between subregions, within subregions, and within individual countries.

Despite the slow progress recorded on several indicators in Africa, there are a number of documented best practices and lessons that can be harnessed in order to accelerate progress. It is encouraging to note that these success stories can be found even in countries recovering from conflicts, such as Liberia and Sierra Leone. These countries have made remarkable progress in infant mortality (Liberia) and maternal health (Sierra Leone). Their performance demonstrates that with the right level of political will and appropriate external support, the MDGs can be achieved even under very difficult conditions.

In this report we underscore the potential for social protection programs in accelerating progress toward the MDGs. Consequently, we urge policymakers to recalibrate their social protection programs, so that they are perceived not as handouts but rather as measures to strengthen productive assets.

These perspectives are pertinent and timely in light of the impact of the food, fuel, and financial crises on the lives of many. It is clear that the role of the state in designing and implementing innovative and fiscally sustainable social protection programs is more vital now than ever before.

Domestic resources must be complemented by scaled-up development assistance if African countries are to attain the MDGs. In this regard, we call for increased development assistance for the achievement of the MDGs in Africa and note with concern that several Official Development Assistance (ODA) commitments to Africa, including those made in Monterrey in 2002, Gleneagles in 2005, and L’Aquila in 2009, have yet to be fulfilled. A less likely to be met in the current environment of fiscal consolidation in response to the global economic crisis. However, it is encouraging to note that developing countries are benefiting from new donors that are non-DAC members and from private sector donations from advanced economies.

Nonetheless, aid to African countries is expected to rise by only 1 percent per year between 2011and 2013, in real terms. Beyond advocacy for more ODA, stepped-up efforts are therefore required on a number of fronts, namely to seek out alternative sources of financing; to be more judicious in the use of existing resources; and to develop credible and robust systems of domestic resource mobilization.  Undoubtedly, aid effectiveness requires close alignment of donor assistance with national priorities, including the MDGs. To this end, implementation of the Paris Declaration and Accra Agenda for Action is key to ensuring a sharper focus by donors on the objectives of recipient countries toward poverty reduction and development.

We wish to thank all those who have contributed to the preparation of this report. We commend and encourage the report’s commitment to take into account the views and experiences of leaders, policymakers, and development practitioners who are actively promoting the achievement of the MDGs in Africa and especially in meeting the agreed targets.