Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the UN Post-2015 Global Development Agenda: Implications for Africa

Abstract

The United Nations declared the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in the year 2000 with the aim of reducing to the barest minimum, by 2015, global poverty and hunger; illiteracy; gender inequality; child and maternal mortality; HIV/AIDS and other world development challenges. Unfortunately, available evidence shows that most, if not all countries in Africa will not achieve the MDGs by 2015, hence the setting up of the UN System Task Team to design a post-2015 Global Development agenda. This response serves as a clarion call for African political leaders who, for too long, have failed to take Africa’s development seriously. The paper examines these deficiencies and also explains why the MGDs are failing in Africa. It adapts qualitative methodology and deploys data from secondary sources. We state that while devising a post-MDG Agenda is a lofty idea, the failure of African leadership to be at the forefront in shaping and determining its contents will create the opportunity for the emergence of a global development paradigm that only satisfies the politico-economic whims and caprices of the donor nations and their institutions for global hegemony. Using a symbiotic development paradigm as the analytical tool, we contend that for UN post-2015 Global Development Agenda to be successful and achievable, it must be comprehensive, inclusive and symbiotic for all nations. We recommend that African leadership should try and become an active participant in the post-2015 global development debate.