MDG Progress Under Scrutiny

Ghana could miss four key targets under the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in the absence of accelerated action, says a gathering of development practitioners, including Vice President John Dramani Mahama.

The goals – which relate to the incidence of hunger, under-five and maternal mortality as well as basic sanitation – were the subject of a discussion between representatives of government, the United Nations, the European Union and civil society – as a follow-up to a call for renewed action at the last MDG summit in September 2010.

“At the rate we’re going, it’s not likely we’re going to meet these goals,” said the Vice President, who expressed particular worry about the “embarrassing” state of the country’s sanitation. Access to basic sanitation by the population stands at 12.4%, it was revealed, against a sub-Saharan African average of 34%, a global average of 61% and an MDG target of 54%.

“It looks like we’re also off-track on infant and maternal mortality,” John Mahama stated, observing that more needs to be done to reduce the current ratio of 350 maternal deaths per 1000 live births to the target of 157 per 1000.
On the threat of hunger, Ms. Ruby Sandhu-Rojon, UN Resident Coordinator, admitted significant progress had been achieved in the last 20 years, but also disclosed that an estimated 1.2 million Ghanaians are food-insecure, while the national rate of under-weight children remains high at 14%.

“Despite economic growth and social progress, Ghana has not done well to reduce inequality,” she said, referring to the particular vulnerability of the three northern regions, where most development indicators lag other parts of the country.
The Vice President added: “The three northern regions have a drawdown effect on the targets that we have achieved.”

But he also maintained the less-than-impressive progress on those lagging goals did not mean that they could not be met all together. “We need to prioritise; we have to look at the regional disparities. Already, we have mainstreamed the strategies into our development agenda.”

Ghana’s more than two decades of consistent economic growth is one of its most trumpeted achievements, with a recent peak of 7.3% attained in 2008. Since the 1990s, the incidence of poverty has been halved, reaching 28.5% according to the last survey in 2006. Significant investments have also gone into education, health and social infrastructure provision, helping to improve some of the development indicators associated with the MDGs. Yet, limited success has been seen in the areas under focus, while vast regional disparities persist.

Again, with growing substantial investment flows into the economy and Ghana’s emergence as a middle-income oil-exporting nation, there is renewed focus on assessing the development impact of the country’s favourable economic-growth credentials. The meeting on the MDGs in Accra was to generate a broad consensus and elicit collective engagement on actions to accelerate progress on the four key goals identified. The exchanges were intended to inform a proposal that would be put forward to funding partners to win additional resources for the advancement of work towards the goals.

Claude Maerten, Head of the EU Delegation to Accra, confirmed Europe’s commitment to assist Ghana meet the challenges.
“It is for government to decide what is priority; we are here to give support,” he affirmed.