Africa: Nations Lag Behind in Millennium Goals, Says UN Chief
| AR Articles on Africa |
|---|
| The Agony of Africa (Dec. 2003) |
| Why is Africa Poor? (Jan. 1992) |
| Light on the Dark Continent (Oct. 1992) |
| Search AmRen.com for Africa |
| More news stories on Africa |
None of the sub-Saharan African countries are on course in meeting the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, UN Secretary General Ban Kimoon said Monday.
“We face a development emergency,” Ban told a high-level segment of the twelfth UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), taking place in Accra, Ghana.
Sub-Saharan Africa, in particular, “is most at risk here, not a single country is on track to meet all of the MDGs by 2015,” he told the gathering of trade and development officials from around the world.
The eight MDGs, set by world leaders in September 2000, are: eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal free primary education, gender equality and empowerment of women and reducing child mortality. The others are improving maternal health, combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, environmental sustainability and developing a global partnership for development.
Ban noted that well past the mid-point of the race to target date, many countries are lagging behind. At the same time, advances on specific goals in individual African countries such as Ghana, Kenya and Uganda suggest that rapid progress is certainly possible, he stated, adding that the successes in these countries need to be replicated and expanded across Africa with effective support from the international community.
Increased trade and investment, particularly in agriculture, are crucial if Africa is to achieve the kind of growth needed to meet the development targets, as well as to address the current global food crisis, which threatens to undo the gains made so far, the Secretary-General said.
He further pointed out that Africa has yet to fully benefit from globalization, especially increased trade and investment, noting that the continent’s share of global trade and foreign investment languishes at a mere three per cent.
Critical to spurring Africa’s growth is to ensure a breakthrough in the Doha Round of trade talks, as well as more South-South exchanges and greater foreign direct investment, he said.
Mr. Ban also drew attention to the “alarming” rise in global food prices, which he said threatens to undo the gains achieved so far in fighting hunger and malnutrition.
The Secretary-General’s visit to Ghana is the first stop on a four-nation tour of West Africa that will also take him to Liberia, Burkina Faso and Côte d’Ivoire.
(Posted on April 23, 2008)
Comments
Absolutely shocking. I bet a friend my life savings, for the Africans, and I guess I am now S O L. As a realist, I was sure that thousands of years of barbarism, tribalism, and sexism could have been overcome in 8 years. I guess the UN’s goals were not met with an equal amount of money. Absolutely shocking.
Posted by Jeremy Douglas at 4:37 PM on April 23
“We face a development emergency”
No. What they face is a development impossibility.
Posted by sbuffalonative at 5:18 PM on April 23
“We face a development emergency,” Ban told a high-level segment of the twelfth UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), taking place in Accra, Ghana.
The only “development emergency” is that Ban and the multiculturalists may someday have to come to grips with reality …
Posted by at 5:23 PM on April 23
Wasn’t sub saharan Africa doing better before they dismantled Apartheid and killed and butchered the 200,000 or so white farmers?
Posted by Petrarch at 5:28 PM on April 23
What an excellent excuse for Obama to engage the United States military as the policeman of Africa. Oh wait, McCain will win and we’re going to fight Iran instead. I forgot. *sigh*. What part of avoiding foreign entanglements is so difficult to understand?
Posted by Unemployed WASP at 5:52 PM on April 23
This inspite of ” remedial education ” by white religious missionaries for over 1,500 years; simply amazing; emphasis on simple.
Posted by Michigan patriot at 6:51 PM on April 23
Obama pushed through legislation that, essentially, makes it the US responsibility to make sure those goals are met, no matter what the cost. Since those goals are impossible (because lack of resources isn’t in any way the cause), expect our economy to go bankrupt before it’s admitted that it’s impossible.
Posted by at 7:24 PM on April 23
Why would this fact possibly suprise anybody? Through the centuries africans have done nothing but spread distruction, disease & death over the African continent. The same holds true today only now it’s throughout the world.
Posted by at 7:48 PM on April 23
Africa, the permanent emergency.
Posted by Reader-1 at 8:12 PM on April 23
Despite the billions - [probably trillions by now) spent since the 1950s when Western powers were sure that with a little help Africa would become a properous forward moving continent, the end to the barbarity of Africa is nowhere in sight, but rather seems to increase.
Posted by Whiteplight at 9:26 PM on April 23
“We face a development emergency” says the U.N. and this in every country in sub-saharan africa. Does anyone else see a pattern here? The moment that the white man started leaving africa the downward spiral began, and the downward spiral will continue until all of africa is back into the stone age. Blacks simply do not have the intelligence or capacity to govern anything, let alone whole countries. Instead of trying to keep those whites who remain, who feed them and keep the technology running and up to date, these idiotic black monkies kill them, throw them off of productive farms, and hound them until they can take no more and leave.
Posted by at 9:40 PM on April 23
None of those countries are on track to meet their goals??? Not now and nit ever will they even meet a tenth of those goals. These countries are backward, corrupt, at war, and with little or no infrastructure in place. For god’s sake they still carry water miles on their head, have they not heard of pipes? And they talk of goals not met!!
Posted by Chuck_W at 10:17 PM on April 23
Africa will soon go the way of complete disaster once all whites are gone from that nation…..anything they rule or touch turns to….well let’s just say manure!
Posted by lydia at 10:20 PM on April 23
…They were expecting something different?
Posted by Lombard at 11:01 PM on April 23
“Despite the billions - [probably trillions by now) spent since the 1950s when Western powers were sure that with a little help Africa would become a properous forward moving continent, the end to the barbarity of Africa is nowhere in sight, but rather seems to increase.”
Posted by Whiteplight at 9:26 PM on April 23
And after 300 years of life in developed societies there is little or no change.
Posted by at 12:32 AM on April 24
Soon after the Second World War, many western thinkers believed that resource rich Africa would leave behind resource poor Asian countries like Korea, Taiwan and Japan and even some European countries like the destroyed nation of Germany in the dust. During the 50’s the Soviet Union and the United States of America interfered in Congo believing that the world’s future depends on that region. How wrong were they?
Posted by Jasper at 12:39 AM on April 24
When I was in Geneva I noticed a large population of African blacks being chauffered in Mercedes from walled villas along the lake to downtown shopping areas and banks. At home its
“revolution” and “white oppression”.for the TV cameras, but no one sees where black African leaders really spend their time.
Posted by at 5:19 AM on April 24
Regarding the prospects for African nations:
“… inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa … all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really … people who have to deal with black employees find this not true … There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so.”
- James D. Watson, MD, PhD
There is nothing more that needs to be said. James D. Watson is not a stupid man. He is, in fact, an extremely intelligent man. He nailed it! The same can be said for the social policies in the United States for the past 50 years.
These social policies are like ‘a fart in a wind storm’. They make little difference and have very little impact. Those trying to implement these policies are ‘pissing into the wind’ and they don’t even seem to realize it.
- Realist in Atlanta
Posted by Realist in Atlanta at 5:49 AM on April 24
What an utterly stunning non-surprise.
I have come to the conclusion long ago that providing money in any form to Africa is plain wrong. Trillions have been spent on all kinds of initiatives to modernise these countries but to no avail. The only ones who continually seem to get ahead are the 1% at the top, where the amount of foreign aid coming in to the country is directly proportional to the number of black BMWs owned.
Posted by ODDL at 8:21 AM on April 24
Too funny. Not only have they not met their goals they are going BACKWARDS. The Human Development Index for S. Africa and Zimbabwe has plummeted since black rule. Watson was right. We assume they are like us when the evidence is the opposite.
Posted by Amsterdamsky at 8:35 AM on April 24
Not to worry guys. Unless something is done soon,and I do not mean aid in the form of cash or food which is all soon swallowed up by the new African leaders and the proceeds deposited in a foreign “safe ” Bank, the Chinese are moving in.
That will mean they have succeeded where the Soviet Union failed because then web (I am ex-SA, now escaped to Spain with many others) had one of the best defence forces in the world, certainly for its size, the Apartheid South African Defence Force (SAdF), yes the same one that even with international sanctions wiped out a Soviet sponsored Cuban army in Angola in 1976.
The new SADF now is reported to be considering inviting the white troops that were kicked out as part of the then (and still everywhere else)affirmative action 15 years ago because so many of its current members are HIV positive, have hepatitus C or are obese. Equipment does not work, although one special heavy machine gun weapon after a service, misfired during testing and killed several SADF personnel.
Good time to attack SA.
Posted by Brian Deller at 9:54 AM on April 24
>>>During the 50’s the Soviet Union and the United States of America interfered in Congo believing that the world’s future depends on that region. How wrong were they?
It’s the INDIGENOUS PEOPLE! Were an incredibly effective, race-specific disease to depopulate Africa and that Sub-Saharan Africa taken over by Whites, Japanese or Chinese — it WOULD assuredly be an economic powerhouse. Black Africans have been a perpetual failure-prone, sociopathic failure of a race since they first appeared, towards the end of the last Ice Age, per anthropologists. Nor is it reasonable to expect another few thousand years to effect much of a change in the average Black.
Which exlains WHY Afro-Centrists go through such ridiculous contortions trying to re-write Black history and explain to us Whites how Blacks, not we Whites, deserve credit for amassing the incredible variety and wealth of knowledge making today’s world possible.
Posted by Fed Up at 1:47 PM on April 24
Those goals are completely unrealistic, even for whites to achieve in the time frame and starting from where Africa was eight years ago. Yet they are modest compared to South African president Thabo Mbeki’s declared goals at the time. He claimed they were going to eradicate conflict, poverty and disease, all three, from the African continent by (I think) 2012. He came home from a meeting with Pres Bush, and reported that “the American President says he supports our goals”. He seemed to infer from that that the American president “takes our goals seriously”, and even “will pay the bills”.
Posted by AnalogMan at 2:46 PM on April 24
“We face a development emergency.” What do you mean- - “we!”
Posted by Tom S at 9:21 PM on April 24
Africa doesn’t need to expand but contract. The higher they
are raised, the higher they will fall when the end comes. And
the higher the population, the more people who will die. It is
unjust to raise anther people beyond the level which they them-
selves can maintain-unjust for both them and us.
Remember the old Star Trek and Star Fleet’s policy of non-
interference with developing planets? Until said planet had de-
veloped the capacity for inter-stellar travel, they were essent-
ially quarantined. It was understood that any contact with them
would only confuse and demoralize them-cultural shock in other
words. Is this not the case with Black Africa? They developed a
huge inferiority complex towards us and then compensated with a
murderous superiority complex.
Posted by Freyr at 1:27 AM on April 25