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It is no longer news that Africa is the most impoverish continent in the world and there has been various approaches toward reducing/eliminating this trend. The contemporary framework for sustaining development and eradicating poverty on the globe was the United Nation Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). It was construed in 1996 as international development targets but was adjusted and updated to the Millennium Development Goals in 2000. African nation had since been working in partnership with governmental and non-governmental organization to promote the achievement of the MDGs. The challenges faced by re-emerging Africa are enormous towards realizing the objective of achieving these goals. These challenges would be highlighted and re-examine in this context.
The symbiosis relationship between peace and development cannot be under-estimated in the quest to achieving the MDGs. A nation that is devoid of peace and security cannot witness, talk less of sustaining developmental programmes. It is necessary for Africasn countries and their development partners to place emphasis or focus on conflict prevention via conflict management to conflict resolution and post-conflict reconstruction. Inter and intra conflict among nation of Africa has been one of the major banes to developmental progress on the continent. A typical example is the case of Dafur region in Sudan where abject poverty co-exist with inter-tribal war living in its wake a critical state of under development and impoverishment. Therefore, one of the major panaceas to stimulate qualitative development and reduce poverty is to prevent destructive conflict from occurrence. A peaceful and conducive environment would allow for consolidation of developmental agendas, thereby resulting into achieving the MDG within the specified time frame. A comprehensive approach to conflict prevention on the continent should be develop, since peace and security is a pre-requisite to achieving the UN Millennium Development Goals.
The optimal development and utilization of human resources is essential to the achievement of the MDGs in Africa. It is unarguably therefore to invest massively in the educational sector. Educational is the key to development while people are the end product of development. Investing in the minds would therefore contribute to qualitative development of lives of the masses. Statistic reveals that only six out of every ten of Africans go to primary school and 60 percent of youth seeking greener pastures abroad are from West Africa. This inadvertently means that tremendous number of its working populations who are supposed to stimulate the economy had sought better lives abroad. This trend should be reversed within a time frame of about 2-3 years, if the continent is to achieve the MDGs target by 2015. At this point, a radical approach should be devised towards accessing the benefits of African migrants into the positive force of development process on the continent. The intrinsic complexity of the issue and the lack of robust policy advice in this area had hitherto been a set back to African nation on all its developmental initiatives. Therefore, scholars and professionals should rise to the occasion by providing a framework that African nation and their partners can work-on in order to incorporate Africans in Diaspora towards the achievement of MDGs in Africa.
African nation should also not confined sustainable development to management of environmental and natural resources, as this are often the case. Emphasis should be put on sustaining human, technological and institutional resources. The process of accessing/ using natural resources should not be made into a dynamic process of impoverishment of the masses. Investing large capital on projects to stimulate economy growth tends to improve on macro-economic indicator while reducing the quality of lives of the masses. The case of oil-spillage in the Niger Delta of Nigeria had left means of livelyhood of the people in that region destroyed thereby impoverish them. In the Prebisch lecture at the UN conference on Trade and Development (1998), Joseph Stiglitz differentiate between the means versus the end. “Over the years development strategies has been series of different approaches driven by simple paradigm of quick economic growth to address the poverty alleviation issue. However, the approach, i.e., the means- building capital of all type- became the end and the objectives of poverty alleviation was trivialized”. Alternatively, the benefits of massive capital investment in Africa should not undermine the qualitative development of the people but rather improves on the qualities of life of the masses. Improving the role of small and medium scale enterprise on the continent would contribute greatly to eradication of poverty. This was the motive behind the millennium development village flag-off recently in Kaduna, Nigeria by the special adviser to the United nation on the Millennium Development Goals, Professor Jeffery Sachs. The local village is to benefit from multi billion-naira project on Poverty reduction (through improve farming practice), educational improvement and infrastructure development. It would improve the lives of the people qualitatively and transform the community into a vibrant economy between now and 2015.
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