April 2, 2007
Article: Africa needs to spend more to meet goals
I know it is hard to believe. But sometimes, even my perfectly-crafted articles don't end up getting used. Here is some cast-off copy exclusively published for you dear remaining blog readers.
By Andrew HeavensAfrican countries will have to make huge increases in public spending to have a chance of meeting international targets to halve poverty by the year 2015, influential economist Jeffrey Sachs told a meeting of the continent's finance ministers on Monday.
Professor Sachs said African states had to step up "targeted investments" in health, education, agriculture and infrastructure like roads and telecoms if they wanted to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) – a series of global targets on reducing everything from hunger to HIV/Aids infections.
He spoke in a recorded video message to a meeting of ministers of finance, planning and economic development from across the continent, organised by the UN's Addis Ababa-based Economic Commission for Africa.
"The key, in my view...is a mass of scaling up of targeted investments in key sectors of each of your economies," he said.
"We have been held back by such different international processes, so much talk, so many missions, so many commitments that as yet have not been fulfilled that this has to be a time for decisive action. No more talk, no more studies, we need to act right now."
It is widely feared that many poverty-stricken African nations are lagging way behind the rest of the world in reaching the goals which were drawn up at the UN Millennium Summit in September 2000. Countries agreed to halve global poverty by reaching the targets by the year 2015. The process reaches the half way mark in September this year.
Professor Sachs said his research suggested African countries needed to spend US$110 per person per year between 2007 and 2015 to reach the goals in time – more than double the US$50 per person that he estimated many African governments actually had to spend in their coffers.
He told ministers: "The gap is where the international community has promised to provide development assistance to enable you to carry out the public sector commitments to achieve the Millennium Development Goals."
Much of that extra funding had already been promised by bodies like the European Union and the G8 nations, he added. "The International Monetary Fund is going to work with donors to mobilize the commitments they made to turn them into actual cash flows."
Other speakers at the Addis Ababa conference admitted that the continent still had a long way to go towards reaching the goals.
"Available empirical evidence suggests that, with the exception of North African countries, several African countries are unlikely to meet the MDGs by 2015," said The African Union's Commissioner for Economic Affairs Dr Maxwell Mkwezalamba said:
"Almost half the population continues to live in extreme poverty and hunger, Africa is at the bottom of the health related human development indicators, and the continent continues to be ravaged by HIV and Aids," he added.
"We will soon run out of time to make the critical investments that we need to make," said Abdoulie Janneh, Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa. He added that African countries needed to find ways to tap the potential of the private sector, increase investment in agriculture and fight to reform the international trading system.
Briefing papers for the conference stated that African countries had to raise their annual growth rates to an average of seven per cent, from the current average of five, to meet the Millennium Goals in time.
Meles Zenawi, prime minister of Ethiopia, urged them to go higher still. "This assessment was done some years back, which means that there is bound to be some backlog that has to be addressed through future growth.
"We may therefore need to grow at significantly higher rates than 7 per cent per annum to achieve our goals. We have a long way to go before we can confidently declare that we are going to make it."
The misisters' meeting is due to release a report on Africa's progress towards the goals late on Tuesday. The report is expected to suggest ways of overcoming obstacles to reaching the Millennium Goals, ranging from climate change to unemployment.
Professor Sachs is director of Columbia University's Earth Institute and Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon.
Posted by aheavens at April 2, 2007 4:56 PM