Contributed Articles
The Millennium Development Goals: Facing Risk
By Kalekristos Zerisenay
Jul 4, 2008, 6:25am

In 2000 world leaders declared the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that aimed at reducing extreme poverty and hunger by half by 2015.

The 2004 progress report pointed out that targets of universal primary education and extreme poverty reduction showed promising results in Latin America, Caribbean, Asia and North Africa. Four years later, however, the story is different. Owing to high oil and food prices, countries that were praised for the progress they have shown previously are now facing hunger. This occurrence is especially affecting Sub-Saharan Africa, which under the 2004 evaluation rated as performing poorly.

International response to the growing hunger is insignificant. The Western world and food aid agencies are no more as generous as they used to be. The major food donors are either not interested or they are dealing with their own domestic problems of high oil and food prices. Likewise, due to the soaring food and fuel prices, international aid organizations could not cop with the problem unless they obtain additional funds. Much worse, as exporting countries like Argentina and India began hoarding, food crops in international markets have become hard to find.

It is under these circumstances that developing countries are expected to achieve the eight MDGs. Oil exporting countries can achieve and even go beyond the goals if they used the revenue from oil rationally but it is less likely for the others. We should not, however, use the present situation as an excuse because cheap oil and food prices are not the only factors for success. Perhaps failure to meet the MDGs is mainly attributable to the political economy of developing countries.

The post-independence political makeup of the Third World is designed to serve elites’ interests of the Third world and Western countries. In many parts of the developing world food productivity has not been given attention. As such, economies of these countries at best persisted in cash crops production, and at worst neglected agriculture after they began exporting minerals or petroleum.

For countries like Eritrea, however, the current situation is a major obstacle to the development process. Eritrea entered the new Millennium in the aftermath of the peace agreement with Ethiopia. Despite this fact, the efforts made by the people and government of Eritrea helped the country gain considerable progress in social services and agricultural infrastructures that eventually would lead towards food security. Today, Eritrea has a relatively good primary education and health services coverage in Sub-Saharan Africa. This has been made true not because of the strong economy or abundant resources that Eritrea possess. The secret of the success lies on Eritrea’s hardworking people and committed government. Eritrea’s relative success, however, should not lead to a conclusion the country is at a very good position. Indeed Eritreans need to work harder than before so that the issue of food security is solved once and for all.

Eritrea sees food security issue from a different angle. While the MDGs intend only about enhancing food securing capacity of the global poor, Eritrea gives attention to the question: where should the food be produced? Agreement has been reached that food grains should be produced domestically and current imports must not continue indefinitely. This policy is chosen at least for two reasons: one is because the Eritrean population is predominantly rural, any development policy that pays no attention to agriculture ignores the majority of our people; and the second is that food self-sufficiency is a key element to food and national security.

Today the policy that Eritrea pursued has produced fruit. The world has changed its tone from food aid for the hungry to enhancing victims’ food productivity. And this is a time for UN agencies and donors to transform themselves from a knee-jerk reaction policy into a long lasting solution by helping developing countries scale up their food production capacity such as mechanization and provision of agricultural inputs.

In the health sector developing countries are still at the lowest level in the world. In countries like Nepal, people have to walk for three or four days to find a poorly staffed hospital. This is not a major problem in Eritrea. Eritrea is on track regarding child and maternal health, HIV/AIDS, malaria and other major diseases. Indeed Eritrea is one of the most successful countries in reducing child mortality rate and malaria.

Gender equality, one of the eight MDGs is also lagging behind the proposed target for different reasons. While people have developed a relatively better understanding of the gender issue, wide school enrollment gap between girls and boys still exist, and progress reports of developing countries indicate that they are off track. But Eritrea’s report shows that gender equality in primary education is steadily improving. Likewise, in several parts of the world potable water is insufficiently supplied and most of it is limited to urban areas. In Eritrea, despite the country’s limited water resources, water supply is rapidly expanding almost evenly and 73 percent of the Eritrean population has access to safe water. The country’s MDGs report also indicates that Eritrea is on track to achieve this goal by 2015.

In several of the MDGs our country has a good score but there is apparent weakness in eradicating extreme poverty and hunger. The connection between peace and development comes here. For Eritrea to eradicate extreme poverty and huger peace is a prerequisite to demobilize soldiers and earmark human and capital resources to development programs. Even so if global oil and food crisis is improved, modest progress is still possible.

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