On the first goal, poverty reduction, the proportion of SSA’s population living on less than $1 per day worsened from 44.6% to 46.4%, the absolute number rising by 38% from 227 million people to 313 million. Although the share of population in a state of hunger dropped, from 36% to 33%, the number of people increased by 34 million. Performance on the second goal, universal primary education, was mixed: the enrolment ratio improved from 54% to 62%, but the completion ratio declined from 57% to 55%. On Goal 6, to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, SSA showed a disastrous increase – from 2.5% to 7% in HIV prevalence and from 142 to 274 TB-related deaths per 100,000 people.

The UN Economic Commission for Africa’s August 2005 report, The MDGs in Africa: Progress & Challenges, evaluates whether countries are likely to meet the MDG targets by 2015. The best performer, Botswana, is likely to meet 9 targets of the 15 examined. Mauritius follows with eight, and five other nations are expected to meet five targets. Of 49 SSA countries, 17 are unlikely to meet any targets, and 13 only one.

The MDGs have been central to the renewal of the western countries’ commitment to development globally. But should they be abandoned by African governments and peoples as a lost cause? UNECA notes that the goals "are far from being the only solution to the development challenges of any specific country". How important are they from the perspective of national development policy? In my view, they remain an essential mechanism for ensuring that the interests of the poor are incorporated explicitly into national policy frameworks in addition to objectives such as macroeconomic stability and productivity growth.

The need for policy emphasis on the MDGs becomes clearer through a consideration of alternative perspectives for African development. One approach – in the UN’s own Millennium Project led by Jeffrey Sachs – argues that Africa is in a "poverty trap", with low rates of productivity growth and of capital accumulation (both human and physical) that are consequence and cause of poor agricultural conditions, small markets with high transactions costs and poor education outcomes. This approach asserts that the continent can escape only via a "big push" that substantially raises public investment in social services and basic infrastructure.

Using a planning approach, each country would identify its MDG target shortfalls and assess the consequent human and financial resource gaps. The Sachs’ report  focuses on the required finance, estimating that $110 per

 capita will be needed. Of this, only $40 can be provided domestically and overseas development assistance (ODA) will have to supply the remainder. The aggregate cost for Africa to meet the MDGs is $121 billion in 2006, rising to $189 billion by 2015. These amounts are considerably higher than current ODA flows of about $80 billion annually, but well below the 0.7% of GDP target for the donor community, which is equivalent to about $215 billion per annum. The UN Millennium Project ultimately argues that the binding constraint preventing an end to poverty is finance and this represents a strong "call to arms" for increased aid flows from the industrialized countries.

Many problems with this argument have been raised, but two difficulties stand out. First, human resource capacity constraints are mentioned only in passing by the Millennium Project. The "big push" means the action programme is not prioritized. Rather, action is required simultaneously across all areas where public investment is needed. This would place huge demands on even the most capable of states. But in most African countries, the state has been severely weakened by two decades of economic decline and structural adjustment, so that even the best civil services on the continent are unlikely to be able to use financial inflows of the magnitudes proposed in the short to medium term. Second, there is little evidence that simply raising spending on public goods and services necessarily leads to improved delivery whether in terms of quantity or quality. The substantial literature on "aid (in)effectiveness" shows that delivery depends on "good governance", that is, a state that is able not just to formulate policy but also to implement it through strong linkages with social groups, which also hold the state accountable to the citizenry.

A second perspective emphasizes the institutional shortcomings of developing countries as the key growth constraint. Missing or poorly functioning institutions result in low levels of entrepreneurial interest and investment. Improving property rights and contract enforcement will address some of the disincentives faced by business, both domestic and foreign. But positive incentives are also needed: subsidies of some sort to encourage firm start-ups and technology upgrading. An essential part of the strategy is that the state "disciplines" firms by withdrawing subsidies and other incentives where firms do not respond appropriately.

NEPAD’s intention is to strengthen African states by creating external pressure through the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), with the prospect of greater donor and investor confidence providing positive incentives to governments to improve governance. But peer review also depends on external pressure being reinforced by domestic pressure "from below".

Where will this domestic pressure come from? There is a critical role for the MDGs here. Some, but certainly not all, state actors in Africa accept the need for strengthening the state (in the sense used here), and a coalition of state and non-state actors needs to be built to confront the powerful interests (private and "public") that in most countries benefit from state weakness and poor governance, and will offer hostile opposition to a more inclusive development process. With the MDGs incorporated fully into the national economic policy framework, such a pro-development coalition becomes possible to imagine, as a wide range of social actors is more likely to join such a coalition than one that approaches good governance in narrower, more business-oriented terms.

Unless poverty reduction, improved health and education, and gender equity are at the heart of policy goals, any coalition to support policy would exclude the interests of the majority of the population, and would stand little chance of succeeding politically. The MDGs are not the only means for ensuring that human development is addressed by economic policy, but they have achieved a broad legitimacy by now. Together with the APRM instituted in Africa itself, the MDGs can play an essential role in addressing Africa’s biggest challenge – to re-empower its national states to carry out their task of leading development.