MDGs in Africa: half way there?

Tajudeen Abdul: For the past six weeks I have been traveling in the western, eastern and southern parts of Africa to assess situations on the ground with regards to the implementation and achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (this being the mid year in the 15-year period set to achieve the goals) and to see preparations being made by various partners of the UN Millennium Campaign for this year's Guinness Challenge to beat the record set last year for Standing Up against Poverty. Led by the UN Millennium Campaign's Global Director, Salil Shetty, the mission involved meeting with various UN country teams, government officials, National Coalitions for the Global Call Against Poverty (GCAP), MDG campaigners, local and international NGOs, other CSOs, media and other opinion molders among others. So far, we have been in Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia and Malawi. There have been a number of activities reports and media focus during July (the exact mid-point of the MDGs being July 7 2007) in many countries, indicating slow progress on a number of the goals. But there is a general pessimistic consensus that at current pace most of our countries may not achieve the goals by 2015. A disproportionate focus on what has not been achieved may actually make one lose sight of the progress being made and what more could be done ... Malawi today is only second to Peru globally in the most dramatic reduction of infant mortality ... As a football supporter, and a life long Liverpool one at that, the analogy I can draw is that of the European finals of 2005. At half time, Liverpool was trailing AC Milan 3:0 ... Liverpool's manager was furious and he read out the riot act to his players. On resumption we saw a changed team who had leveled the scores by full time and refused to concede any even during extra time. Finally in the shoot-out Liverpool won. We should use the same tactics for our governments ...