The Bright Continent

Last fall I attended the United Nations’ grand 2010 celebration of the 2000 Millennium Declaration—which enshrined the Millennium Development Goals as a global project for a new century. It was a pomp-filled, yet hollow-feeling affair in part because the goals are lagging behind. Some goals—primary school enrollment, for example—are held up as exemplars of the rightness of the MDG framework. Others—reducing maternal mortality—are still cruelly out of reach. In Africa, the enrollment of girls compared to boys actually declined from 82 percent in 1999 to 79 percent in 2007.

But it is not just tangible failures that have some questioning the basic premise behind the agreement, to be achieved by 2015. The very construction and definition of the goals—and the metrics used to evaluate the project of improving education and maternal health, preventing child death and ending hunger—seems deeply flawed. Why focus on enrollment in school, for example, when many economies can’t sustain a labor market for those who do complete school? What are the kids even learning?

This paper from International Alert parses the MDG’s snowballing, and deserved, fall from grace:

There is a nagging sense among the development community that it has got this wrong. Only a few years ago, there was a tangible sense of optimism about development progress, fuelled by the global economic boom, the possibilities created by the end of the Cold War, the excitement generated by the Millennium Declaration, by a cadre of promising new leaders in developing countries, by a genuine commitment to progress among voters in the West, and by increasing flows of aid. This mood was exemplified by the 2005 Gleneagles Agreement between the G8 countries, and by the Make Poverty History campaign in the UK. There was a sense of confidence that we had learned from some of the failures of the past.

It bears repeating that the promises, hard and soft, of Gleneagles have not been fulfilled (remittance flows from African migrants per annum approaches the amount of money pledged in Scotland that year). And so today:

the mood is more subdued. The global recession has reduced the rate of economic growth in some developing countries, and has led voters and politicians in richer countries to question aid budgets at a time when their own domestic programmes are being squeezed for funds.

In the last month I’ve personally visited two health-related projects in two countries sponsored in large part by the Irish government that are being defunded in the wake of that country’s economic implosion (On that subject, do read Michael Lewis in Vanity Fair). In some ways, this is pulling off the aid band-aid that folks like Dambisa Moyo abhor. Such constraints require doing more with less (nothing new in many African contexts), and changing the framework for “what we talk about when we talk about development.” But what will replace the poorly-defined goals?

International Alert takes a stab:

1. Equal access to political voice, and the legitimate and accountable use of power.

2. Equal participation in a vibrant and sustainable economy.

3. Equal access to justice, and equality before the law.

4. Freedom from insecurity.

5. The ability of people to maintain their mental and physical well-being, to have aspirations and make progress towards them.

6. The self-reinforcing presence of institutions and values that support and enable equitable progress and peace.