Millennium Development Goals: How are we doing?

At a global summit held in the year 2000, world leaders committed themselves to strive for the attainment by 2015 of a set of 8 far-reaching developmental mileposts known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Unlike previous global agreements (for example, the Alma Ata 'Health for All by the Year 2000' declaration), the MDGs were specifically tied to numerical benchmarks consisting of 21 quantifiable targets measured on the basis of 60 indicators. Goals 4-6 specifically target health issues, respectively to reduce child mortality, improve maternal health, and combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases. However, the rest of the goals (eradicate poverty and hunger; achieve universal primary education; promote gender equality; ensure environmental sustainability) are also inextricably tied to improved health outcomes. The MDGs are the most broadly supported, comprehensive and specific development goals the world has ever agreed upon and, according to the UN Development Programme, great progress has already been made globally at the midpoint in the MDG timeline, although sub-Saharan Africa lags far behind other world regions. With the possible exception of South Africa and Zambia, most of the sub-Saharan countries are not on track to make the MDG deadlines, even though the goals remain achievable within these nations' means and circumstances. South Africa has, by all accounts, made impressive progress in respect of some MDGs. Since 1994, extreme poverty (subsistence on less than $2 a day) has been halved, largely through exponential growth in cash transfers in the form of social assistance grants and in the number of beneficiaries. It must be said, however, that such handouts cannot be the ideal response to poverty. Ultimately, increased social upliftment including greater employment opportunities and more equitable wealth distribution remains the only durable solution. Government has greatly expanded access to all sorts of services since 2000. According to the 2009 General Household Survey, 83% of South Africans had electricity connection (with wide provincial and urban/rural disparities). The number of households with access to safe water exceeds 80%. Since 1994, South Africa has seen massive shifts of resources to the education sector, making education the single largest budget item, itself among the highest allocations in the world as a proportion of the GDP. Remarkably in the context of the developing world, girls outnumber boys in secondary education, and already by 2001 the female-to-male ratio in higher education had risen to 115:100 (although this ratio drops off significantly at master's and …