Africa, 150 Years Behind in Development

The Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown has once more warned that on current forecasts, Sub-Saharan Africa will achieve the target of reducing child mortality by 2165 and not 2015 as has been projected by the United Nations.

By Brown's projections, donors are 150 years off target in tackling poverty in Africa and the rest of the developed world. "This is not good enough. The promise we made was for 2015 and not 2165", Brown told a conference of diplomats and aid agencies in London last Monday.

He said: "If we let things slip, the millennium development goals will become another dream and we will be sitting back on our sofas and switching on out TVs and I am afraid, watching people die on our screens for the rest of our lives. We will be the generation that betrayed its own heart."

He warned that unless developed countries stopped paying lip-service to fighting poverty in the developed world the first target of the millennium development goals-to ensure girls are given the same education as boys by 2005 would be missed, while targets to establish universal basic education by 2015 would not be met until 2129.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDAs) were initiated by United Nations Secretary General, Kofi Annan to help developing countries, especially those from Africa reduce poverty and improve primary education by 2015.

The targets of the MDAs include; to halve the number of people living on $1 a day of suffering from hunger, ensure all children complete primary schooling, end disparity in education between boys and girls and cut death rates in under-five by two-thirds. The rest are to reduce maternal mortality by three-quarters, halt the spread of HIV/AIDS and other killer diseases, half the number living without access to drinking water and develop global partnerships for development.

However, Aid agencies, advocacy groups and development experts fear that none of the above goals is on target of being met by 2015. This is partly due to the failure of western countries, more specifically the G8 countries to honour their pledges. Figures available indicate that Overseas Development Assistance have dropped to significant levels per GNP in all G8 countries and were at an all time low of 1989 levels.

On the strength of above statistics Brown also warned of the slow progress towards reducing the proportion of people living in extreme poverty in some parts of the world, saying that: "our best estimate is that it will not be achieved in Sub-Saharan Africa for more than 100 years.

The United Nations estimates that of the 34 least developed countries in the world, 28 are from Sub-Saharan Africa

The Chancellor made an impassioned plea to world leaders to double aid to the poorest countries, and urged the international community to support British proposals for a new international finance facility (IFF) to double aid from $50 billion to $100 billion a year.

The Chancellor's speech was welcomed by aid agencies and campaigners, with opposition MPs even calling for Britain to do more to increase aid spending and open world markets to developing countries.

Lord Carey, the former Arch Bishop of Canterbury who hosted the event lamented that while England wasted 2.3 billion pounds on pet food and care in 2002 and Americans spent $700 billion on beverages, very little goes for alleviating poverty worldwide.

Bono, the Irish rock star called on delegates, which included Live Aid founder Bob Geldof to 'dramatise' the cause of world poverty, just as he (Geldof) had 'dramatised' the plight of Africa nearly 20 years ago.