That 140 heads of state and governments have left their busy schedules to attend a week-long United Nations Millennium Development Goals summit is a pointer to the importance attached to the goals.

Unlike other conferences, this one seems to be bearing fruit.

Though initially treated with cynicism rather than a development framework, gradually, the cynicism has been replaced by hope as more and more countries meet their part of the bargain on the goals and timelines set forth.

At the time of inception of the goals, roughly half of Africa’s population was living on less than one dollar a day.

Aids, malaria and TB were out of control while wars were pervasive as African economies stagnated. Fast-forward to this year, and the battle against disease, corruption and a host of other ills envisioned in the MDGs are slowly being won. The Aids incidence has declined — from an estimated 2.3 million new cases in 2001, to 1.9 million in 2008.

Following a similar trend is Malaria, thanks to programmes aimed at distributing bed nets and provide medicines.

LOWER POVERTY

Save for one or two places, Africa’s major wars are fewer. Despite the global economic downturn, Africa — of all the places —registered in average better economic growth rates than other parts of the world.

Most economists agree that extreme poverty on the continent is declining, though not yet fast enough to meet the MDG targets — extreme poverty has declined from around 58 per cent in 1999 to just under 50 per cent this year.

MDGs frameworks have, slowly by slowly provided the best organisational frameworks with scores of African governments now having adopted national planning strategies based on the Millennium Goals.

Nations around the world now have specific, time-bound, plans that are showing real progress as they struggle to reduce poverty, increased agricultural output, control pandemic diseases, increased primary school enrolment while investing in infrastructure to achieve economic growth levels envisioned in the MDGs.

The world over, the talk now is that of increased investments for agriculture, education, health, energy and microfinance, gender equality, the complementary roles of development aid, trade and private financing.

So, as world leaders gather for MDG summit at the UN in New York, a new research examining development progress published by Britain’s leading think-tank on international development, the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) has confirmed the trends.

The new report shows where substantial advances have been made, as well as where progress has been challenging

Ghana continues to out perform all other countries around the world by reducing hunger by nearly three-quarters, from 34 per cent to nine per cent, between 1990 and 2004.

It is approximated that Ghana will achieve MDG 1 before 2015. In the same spirit, many other African nations made tremendous achievements. Ten African countries, including Ethiopia, Egypt, and post-conflict Angola, halved their absolute poverty levels.

Angola and Niger reduced their under-five mortality ratios by more than 100 per 1,000 deaths in less than two decades.

The West African nation of Benin ranked in the top ten in education improvements with school enrolments increasing from 43 to 83 per cent between 1992 and 2007.

The report makes a crucial distinction between absolute versus relative progress.

closing the gap

Relative progress measures a country’s progress relative to initial conditions. This highlights the degree to which they have closed the gap on MDG targets.

Absolute progress measures change regardless of initial conditions. Low-income countries tend to rank top on absolute progress, whereas middle-income countries tend to do better at closing the gap.

MDGs have provided a global agenda that has galvanised international action towards agreed indices of change.