ABSTRACT: "Those involved in the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) campaign routinely state 'Africa will miss all the MDGs.' This paper argues that a series of arbitrary choices made in defi ning “success” or 'failure' as achieving numerical targets for the Millennium Development Goals made attainment of the MDGs less likely in Africa than in other regions even when its progress was in line with historical or contemporary experience of other regions. The statement that 'Africa will miss all the MDGs' thus paints an unfairly bleak portrait of Africa."Comment: Easterly makes a number of points, including that starting counting of MDG performance in 1990, a decade before they were promulgated, fails to take into account the African problems in that decade, and that it is harder to achieve the goals for Africa since it starts from further back. I know what Easterly means, but I don't know how goals per se can be unfair. What might be unfair is the interpretation of goal accomplishment. Certainly African nations have made significant development gains in the last decade and a half, and should be credited with those successes.
On the other hand, the Millennium Development Goals may be unfair to richer nations, since they do not much challenge those countries. It also seems that countries with abysmal poverty in is aspects of hunger, ignorance, illness and early death should be challenged with ambitious goals to eliminate those problems. JAD
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