MDG 1

History will judge us harshly unless we act, writes Archbishop Njongo Ndungane.

The United Nations (UN) and its agencies will use the 2010 World Cup to highlight Africa's slow progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of halving poverty by 2015.

UN under-secretary-general for communications and public information, Kiyo Akasaka, says that the UN is concerned that sub-Saharan countries are significantly behind schedule in realising some of the key development goals agreed to by more than 189 countries in Johannesburg in 2000.

Over the past few months, and in fact since the beginning of the year 2009, there has been a flurry of activities, workshops and international conference halls filled with bewildered delegates trying to craft solutions on perhaps one of the greatest challenges of our times: climatic change, and what it portends for livelihoods across the globe.

From 16-18 October, South Africans will join millions of people across the globe in the “Stand Up, Take Action, End Poverty Now!” Campaign as they call on world leaders to eradicate extreme poverty and achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Last year almost 117 million people participated in this annual campaign, the majority from poor countries, breaking the Guinness World Record for the largest mobilisation of human beings in recorded history.

The severity of poverty worldwide prompted 189 world leaders in 2000 at the United Nations Millennium Summit to make a promise about the eradication of poverty by the year 2015. These commitments became to be known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Now with six years to go until the MDGs deadline of 2015 and for South Africa five years (as we have identified 2014 – 20 years into our democracy – as our target), we need to assess whether sufficient progress has been made in reaching the goals. This narrative paints a bleak picture.

For a long time, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) did not mean much to me. In my mind, they seemed like quasi-development goals that were a compromise after years of fighting for a development agenda at a global level. The MDGs did not go far enough in terms of making substantive inroads on poverty and inequality, and the South African context seemed to make them irrelevant. After all, we had our Constitution which committed our citizens and leaders to a far better standard of life than the MDGs could offer.

Stand Up & Take Action is the largest global initiative for action by people to take action for a better world. It speaks directly to ending poverty, ensuring every child gets an education, it promotes fair and just treatment of women, a HIV free world, sustainable climate positive actions and a global collective for development.

African health workers continue to be overworked, underpaid and often unappreciated, despite the fact that they form the foundation of the continent’s fight against HIV/AIDS. Without these health workers, Africa’s efforts to stem the tide of the epidemic would be futile.

Representatives of leading aid organisations have demanded that G8 countries, and in particular G8 summit host Italy, take urgent action to make up a R188 billion shortfall in aid promised to Africa.

Head of the international aid agency Oxfam's Italian office, Farida Bena has called on G8 leaders to come up with what she calls “an emergency programme”. Bena says that US$23 billion is not a lot of money compared to what has been spent bailing out the banks.