The UN Millennium Project, a sort of specially-convened think tank put together by Kofi Annan to report on how the world can meet the Millennium Development Goals, often suggests very similar proposals to its director, Jeffrey Sachs, and his book The End of Poverty. I’m choosing, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, to assume that this is because Sachs’ own thoughts have been informed by the hundreds of experts consulted by the UNMP’s numerous task forces, and not because Sachs himself had undue influence over the project’s Report. Certainly, one of the areas where they both share the most common ground is in their proposals for country-level plans to achieve the MDGs. Each developing country, the report argues, should put together a plan for investment and reform that would see it achieve the MDGs by the deadline in 2015. The plan shouldn’t be focussed on what can be achieved with current funding levels, as many are now; instead, the baseline for “realistic” should be what it takes to achieve the MDGs, and it will be up to the international community to fund plans that are well drafted. Financial considerations, the report argues, should not be a driving factor in making the plans, though technical constraints should.

Fortunately, the report notes, the development industry already has a system that can be adapted for this purpose: the nattily-named Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper. These are poverty plans which, since the mid-1990s, developing countries have been required to complete to receive support from the World Bank and IMF. The strategies were brought in in response to criticisms that poor countries were being given no say in reforms to their economies designed to reduce poverty; but they also enable donors to assess developing country governments’ commitment to - and capacity for - poverty reduction. Now, the UNMP argues, “MDG-focussed PRSPs” will give poor countries a way of planning massive poverty reduction strategies to meet the MDGs - and give rich countries a clear guide to how much extra aid they need to provide. (p24)

So what do these plans need to cover?

  1. The nature and underlying causes of poverty - and how it varies by region, gender, age, and so on. Is poverty in one particular country mostly urban? Rural? Female?
  2. Exactly what public investments are needed, from transport to education, to meet the goals. These should not be vague statements, but precise measurements.
  3. Both a ten-year framework for achieving the MDGs (remember, the report was published in early 2005, ten years before the goals’ deadline) and a 3-5 year plan for immediate action.
  4. A public sector management strategy, ensuring the country’s public sector is up to the task. This should include things like measurement and accountability, human rights, and so on. In addition, it should plan ways to decentralise decision-making for the carrying out of the plan to local level.
  5. A private sector strategy focussed on building up business in order to kick-start economic growth and reduce the country’s dependence on aid.
  6. While some countries, including most of Africa, will need aid beyond 2015, some can be expected to “graduate” from aid before then. These country’s PRSPs should also include an aid exit strategy for a timed, orderly transition to self-sufficiency.

So when it comes to the actual investments needed, what sort of thing does the report have in mind? It breaks its suggestions down into seven “investment-and-policy clusters”.

Rural development

AIM: increase food production

  • achieve a “21st-Century African Green Revolution” by supplying soil nutrient fertilisers and training in better soil management techniques
  • invest in rural transport, communications, drinking water and sanitation, irrigation, and energy
  • all in an environmentally sustainable way

Urban development (p28)

AIM: upgrade slums, prevent new slums developing, and provide jobs

  • Improve tenant’s rights and security of tenure for people who live in slums
  • Support poor-people-led efforts to build decent housing
  • Strengthen urban planning systems, ensuring poor people’s input, especially women’s
  • Expand basic infrastructure to slums
  • Reduce air and water pollution
  • Establish “special investment zones” to encourage business growth
  • Strengthen NGOs and civil society groups and encourage their voice in discussions

Health

AIM: ensure universal access to essential services

  • Focus health efforts on district hopitals, with these acting as hubs for local services
  • Train more doctors and nurses
  • Build hospitals and clinics
  • Provide more medicines
  • Strengthen management
  • Eliminate user fees for essential services
  • Train community workers - “barefoot doctors” - to provide simple treatments, educate communities, and involve them in decision making
  • Establish systems to monitor and evaluate district service

Education

AIM: ensure universal primary education and expand secondary and higher education

  • Build schools and train teachers where there are shortages
  • Revise curricula to ensure relevance and eliminate gender bias
  • Give parents and communities power to hold schools accountable
  • Eliminate primary school fees
  • Use special initiatives to reach vulnerable children who aren’t in school
  • Recognise civil society organisations as “legitimate partners in debate”
  • Meeting the goals will also require “political transformation” to commit to universal education and eliminate favouritism

Gender equality

AIM: invest to overcome gender bias1

  • Collect gender-focussed data for essential services to check extent of problem
  • Protect sexual and reproductive rights and provide access to reproductive health services2
  • Ensure women have equal legal rights with regard to land tenure etc
  • Increase women’s representation in politics
  • Protect women from violence

Environment

AIM: invest in improved resource management3

  • Integrate environmental strategies into all policies
  • Promote regulatory reforms to protect environment
  • Introduce environmental monitoring
  • Replant forests
  • Treat waste water
  • Restrict chemical pollution
  • Remove subsidies that encourage environmentally risky behaviour

Science

  • Create science advisory groups to advise governments
  • Expand science and engineering faculties in universities
  • Make science curricula more business focussed
  • “Promote infrastructure development as a technology learning process”4 (p28-31)

However, the report notes, the seven areas are interdependent. No one can be invested in on its own. In each area the different sectors will have different levels of priority, but PRSPs must aim to achieve the goals in all sectors to be effective.

The report outlines a little of what the balance of priorities should be for each region. For sub-Saharan Africa, it argues that the popular belief that governance should be the main focus is wrong. Many parts of the continent, it argues, are well-governed, but stuck in a “poverty trap”. Instead, the primary focus should be on:

  • rural and urban productivity;
  • major investments in public health to tackle AIDS, TB, malaria, and child and maternal mortality;
  • sexual and reproductive health to provide more manageable family sizes;
  • building more schools, training more teachers, and providing incentives for girls and vulnerable children to attend school;
  • major investment in water management and energy;
  • tackling legal and social barriers facing women and girls.

This all still sounds a bit vague, right? In fairness, as the report notes, the precise package of interventions needed will vary widely around the world because of environmental, social, political and cultural factors. In addition, different countries are in different positions now, because of past investment, and so will need a different balance of remedies to meet the goals.

Fortunately however, the report does outline a host of specific interventions - the so-called “quick wins” - which can be done quickly, relatively affordably, across the developing world and will bring rapid gains towards the goals. We’ll take a look at those next time, along with the report’s thoughts on how best to scale up the interventions.

  1. Bit vague, dontcha think? The specific MDG goal for gender equality is to eliminate gender disparities in education.
  2. Sounds uncontroversial, but this is an allusion to providing both contraception and abortion services, which can be decidedly problematic in some countries. Even now, US aid is blocked to organisations that advise on abortion.
  3. Notice how much vaguer these later sections are than those on health and education. A similar problem occurs with the goals themselves - those on poverty, education, health and so on are very precise, latter ones on education and “global partnership” maddeningly vague.
  4. I have no idea what this means.

Page numbers come from the Overview Report. You can also see the full 300+ page version, ten key recommendations, or the reports of the individual task forces.