While growth has recovered on the continent, the gains in terms of social development and poverty reduction are still limited. This sub-section reviews the evidence on social development through the lenses of the MDGs. Following a discussion of progress and challenges for the various goals, the sub-section provides a more detailed discussion of the challenges posed by HIV/AIDS. More details on progress towards the MDGs in Africa is provided in various ECA documents, including a forthcoming report (UNECA 2007), as well as reports by other United Nations publications (e.g. UNDP and UNICEF 2002).
Overall assessment of the MDGs As can be seen in table 2.8, progress towards the MDGs is slow; thus, serious challenges remain in all major areas of social development. Nevertheless, on a disaggregated level, some countries have made significant progress.
Goal 1: Eradicate extreme hunger and poverty The share of the population living on less than one dollar (PPP) per day remains virtually unchanged over the 12-year period, 1990-2002 (table 2.8). The lack of progress in poverty reduction can be attributed to two factors. First, poverty rates tend to follow growth with a lag. Secondly, recent economic growth has not been accompanied by meaningful job creation (UNECA 2006b). This is because in many countries, growth rates have not been high enough to generate sufficient demand for labour. Moreover, growth remains highly volatile, which hampers job creation in the private sector.
Furthermore, the shift of economic activity away from agriculture into capital-intensive sectors such as mining and oil, has also undermined job creation. The fact that employment creation is not integrated into macroeconomic policy frameworks as an explicit goal of macroeconomic policy is an additional reason for the weak gains from recent growth recovery in terms of job creation (Pollin et al. 2006). Therefore, African countries need to adopt more flexible pro-growth macroeconomic frameworks and better targeted sectoral policies in order to increase employment as a means of accelerating poverty reduction.
Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education Compared to other regions, SSA lags behind in progress towards universal primary education (UPE) (United Nations 2006a). Between 1990 and 2004, net enrolment rates increased in SSA from 53.0 per cent to 64.2 per cent, and in North Africa from 80.6 per cent to 94.0 per cent. Even though progress has been made, efforts need to be scaled up in most African countries to reach UPE by 2015.
Some countries have made significant progress in primary education as in the case of Ethiopia, where enrolment more than doubled from 22 per cent in 1990 to 47 per cent in 2004 (United Nations 2006b) due to large-scale investments in government schools, which now serve nearly 90 per cent of students in primary and secondary schools (World Bank 2005). However, the increase in enrolment needs to be matched by proportional increases in teaching staff and materials to guarantee adequate quality of education. This is true in Ethiopia as in other SSA countries. It is estimated that to reach UPE in SSA the current stock of teachers has to increase by almost 20 per cent each year (World Bank and IMF 2005).
Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women The ratio of girls to boys in gross primary school enrolment increased over the 199112004 period from 0.84 to 0.89 in SSA and from 0.82 to 0.94 in North Africa.
However, the ratio for secondary enrolment in SSA dropped between 1999 and 2004 from 0.82 to 0.79 and that for tertiary enrolment from 0.69 to 0.63 (United Nations 2006a).
Some countries such as Burkina Faso and Mali, have made significant progress towards gender parity through school feeding programmes. Rwanda also made substantial progress in gender parity as a result of its post-conflict reconstruction programme, which benefited from generous donor support. Close monitoring of the gender gap and a better targeting of policy interventions are needed to accelerate progress towards gender equity. To fill this need for monitoring of gender equity, ECA has developed a new tool, the African Gender and Development Index (AGDI), an integrated index that measures integration of women in all aspects of a country’s economic and political life (UNECA 2006b).
Goal 4: Reduce child mortality Substantive progress has also been made, especially in North African countries, in reducing child mortality over the past decades. Between 1990 and 2004, under-five mortality in this subregion was reduced from 88 to 37 deaths per 1,000 live births and infant mortality from 66 to 20 deaths per 1,000 live births. In contrast, progress in SSA countries has been very modest (United Nations 2006a).
Goal 5: Improve maternal health The proportion of births attended by skilled health personnel shows a massive improvement in North Africa from 40 per cent to 71 per cent over the 1990-2004 period. For SSA, the progress has been very modest, from 42 to 46 per cent over the same period (United Nations 2006a). It is estimated that SSA needs to triple its health workforce, adding more than one million workers to reach the health-related MDGs (World Bank and IMF 2005).
Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases Currently, it is estimated that more than 25 million Africans live with HIV, and 2 million out of the 2.8 million AIDS-related deaths in 2005 were in Africa. In the 38 hardest hit African countries, it is projected that there will be 19 million additional deaths due to AIDS between 2010 and 2015. The second part of this sub-section discusses the challenges caused by HIV/AIDS in more detail.
In the fight against malaria, African countries committed themselves in 2000 to dramatically increase the provision of insecticide-treated nets. Remarkable success in the provision of nets to children under five has been recorded in such countries as Eritrea and Malawi, reaching a coverage of 60 per cent and 36 per cent, respectively (WHO and UNICEF 2006). With respect to tuberculosis, the situation worsened in SSA, with an increase in prevalence from 337 per 100,000 of the population in 1990 to 492 in 2004. In North Africa, tuberculosis is less of a problem with only 52 cases out of 100,000 of the population in 2004.
Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability While total carbon dioxide emission increased between 1990 and 2003 from 228 to 413 millions of metric tons in North Africa and from 416 to 530 millions of metric tons in SSA, other indicators of environmental quality have improved. For example, the proportion of the population with access to an improved water source increased from 49 per cent in 1990 to 56 per cent in 2004 in SSA and from 89 per cent to 91 per cent in North Africa. Likewise, access to improved sanitation rose from 65 per cent to 77 per cent in North Africa and from 32 per cent to 37 per cent in SSA over the 1990-2004 period (United Nations 2006a).
The rural sector remains especially marginalized relative to urban areas in access to drinking water, with only 42 per cent of the rural population having access to an improved water source in 2004 as compared to 80 per cent for the urban population.
There are also large disparities between countries. In 2004, Ethiopia had the lowest coverage in the world of rural population with safe drinking water - only 11 per cent.
In contrast, Burundi and Gambia had a coverage of 77 per cent in the same year. The rapid increase in the urban population, low investment in new water supply systems,and poor maintenance of existing water networks in Africa constitute major challenges to adequate provision of drinking water in most African countries (United Nations 2006a; WHO and UNICEF 2006).
Goal 8: Develop a global partnership for development Over the past few years, African countries have developed partnerships that should improve the continent’s access to external development finance and export markets.
These developments are discussed in chapter 3 of this report (also see UNECA 2006b).
To learn more about this author, visit United Nations Economic Commission for Africa's Website.
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