African countries on track to meeting four MDGs as 2015 deadline comes closer

A new report has given Africa a thumbs up for making great strides towards achieving of some Millennium Development Goals as the 2015 comes closer.

The MDG African Progress Reports shows that the continent is on track towards achieving universal primary education, global partnership for development, promoting gender parity and empowering women and combating Hiv/Aids, TB, malaria and other diseases, which are listed as MDGs 2, 8, 3 and 6 respectively.

However, the report says the continent is still grappling with MDGs 1, 4, 5, and 7, — poverty and hunger eradication, reduction of child mortality, improved maternal health and ensuring environmental sustainability respectively.

Globally in 2012, 15 of the 20 countries that made great progress on the MDGs were in Africa.

In Africa, the report says, Benin, Egypt, Ethiopia, Gambia, Malawi and Rwanda are making impressive progress on a number of goals.

Rwanda leads the pack in East Africa, with the report indicating that the country is on track towards achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality and women empowerment, reduction of child mortality, improving maternal health and spearheading global partnership for development.

Rwanda is the only country in East Africa that has registered success in empowering women after introducing a 30 per cent quota for female Members of Parliament in 2003. The country now has the biggest participation of women in parliament in the world, with around 56 per cent of Members of Parliament being women.

Tanzania is also on track towards achieving universal primary education while Kenya and Uganda scored highly in a global partnership for development MDG.

However, while Africa is the world’s second fastest growing region, the rate of poverty reduction is insufficient to reach the target of reducing extreme poverty by half in 2015.

The report, jointly funded by the African Union, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, the United Nations Development Programme and the African Development Bank, shows that extreme poverty has declined faster since 2005 than in the period between 1990 and 2005.

However, the report added that the pace is not fast enough to reach the target by 2015.

“The proportion of people living in extreme poverty in Southern, East, Central and West Africa as a group fell from 56.5 per cent in 1990 to 48.5 per cent in 2010; about 20.25 percentage points off the 2015 target compared with just 4.1 points for South Asia,” says the report.

Africa’s sluggish poverty reduction, the report says, is due to its lower economic growth.

Goal 1 aims to reduce poverty and hunger and increase gainful employment. Poverty in Africa exists predominantly in rural areas, where it is estimated to be at least three times higher than in urban areas in several countries.