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mhlalisi
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MDG's - Where is Africa going wrong?
June 22, 2007 - 11:52 AM
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So much aid has been poured into Africa but surprisingly, the continent still remains the most underdeveloped. Where are we going wrong?
This post was edited on: 2007-06-22 at 12:12 PM by: mhla
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Thabiso Ephraim Teffo
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Re: MDG's - Where is Africa going wrong?
July 4, 2007 - 04:09 AM
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you raised a most important question , within the boader context of all this aid that is poured into Africa, where are we going wrong to adrress all this soci-economic challenges , what an interesting topic to start with , but firstt question is , what are this aid for , are they to strengthen conflicts , or create Peace , this is one topic that we need to explore , the issue in question is that , the problem is we are letting most of our countries to rely on freebies , and that is a major challenge , for us as African we need to say that the time is know wherein we will start doing thingst ourselves for the development of this countries , we need develop our own natural resources to be able to adress all this challenges for success
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Suraya Asmal
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Re: MDG's - Where is Africa going wrong?
July 4, 2007 - 06:28 AM
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I doubt one can really classify Africa as a whole as 'going wrong'. While many efforts are being carried out by various governments to achive the MDG's by 2015, other countries, such as South Africa, have reported very positively in terms of already achiving certain goals.
Also, in terms of Aid being oured into Africa, bear in mind that many SAP's lead to further debt; and in terms of foreign investments increasing in Africa, remember that the majority of the people are still being exploited in terms of cheap labour etc. Contributing factors are also the corrupt governance in numrous African states as well as political instability, which hinder the achievment of the MDG's.
While numerous states in Africa face many challenges with regards to achieving the MDG's, other states are confident about achieving the MDG's even before 2015. In a media report this week, the deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka is quoted to have said:
"Now, the millennium development goals of the UN are actually less ambitious than our own goals for 2014, so for us, there is no way that we can't reach the millennium development goals, because we have already put more ambitious goals for ourselves."
It will always be interesting to monitor the progress of the MDG's in Africa as our continent contains both the extremely wealthy, and the extremely poor.
I hope that we do work towards achieving the MDG's.
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Cathbert Riphaty
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Re: MDG's - Where is Africa going wrong?
July 10, 2007 - 08:37 AM
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Sure we cant deny that Lots of Aids from developed countries, World bank, and different individual people like Bilgates are provided to africa,
But the issue is i think,
One is coprruption,Because of our poverty when the aid jus being placed on our hands every one starts thinking on hw to benefit from the aid through wrong ways which will not regenerate the aid!!
also wat else is we africans actuaully we dont want think on how to utilize the aisd we are getting I mean we fail to plan on how to regenarates the aids we are getting,how to make them productive so that we wont go back to seek for another aid in the same field we got the last one!!
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KUSHERKI
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Re: MDG's - Where is Africa going wrong?
November 1, 2007 - 01:04 PM
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When African men and women of ideas, who will give birth to new ideas, have fled to Europe and the United States, then the so-called African Renaissance cannot occur in Africa. It can only occur in Paris, London and New York. There are more Soukous musicians in Paris, than in Kinshasha; more African professional soccer players in Europe, than in Africa. African literature is more at home abroad than it is in Africa. In other words, Africans in Europe are alleviating poverty in Europe, not in Africa. Until the men and women of ideas — the true healers of Africa — start returning home, the African Renaissance and poverty alleviation will remain empty slogans. After all, the brightest ideas are generated and harnessed by men of ideas.
The intellectual capital needed to produce products and services will lead to the path of poverty alleviation. Intellectual capital, defined as the collective knowledge of the people, increases productivity. The latter — by driving economic growth — alleviates poverty, always and everywhere, even in Africa. Productivity is the engine that drives global economic growth.
Those who create new knowledge are producing wealth, while those who consume it are producing poverty. If you attend a Wole Soyinka’s production of Chinua Achebe’s "Things Fall Apart,” you consume the knowledge produced by Soyinka and Achebe as well as the actor’s production, much like I consume the knowledge and production of Bob Marley’s through his songs.
We will need wisdom, that which turns too much information — or information overload — into focused power, not only to process, but also to evaluate the overwhelming amount of information available on the Internet. This wisdom will give us the competitive edge and enable us to find creative solutions.
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Tosin O.
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Re: MDG's - Where is Africa going wrong?
December 5, 2007 - 09:16 AM
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mhlalisincube wrote:
So much aid has been poured into Africa but surprisingly, the continent still remains the most underdeveloped. Where are we going wrong?
This post was edited on: 2007-06-22 at 12:12 PM by: mhla
I wonder where exactly we are getting it wrong with the MDGs activities and its implementations too.
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Sangeeta
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Re: MDG's - Where is Africa going wrong?
December 14, 2007 - 04:44 PM
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1) Infrastructure
2) Aid being put into investments to encourage infrastructure.
3) Enough aid -- regardless of what people say, there is not enough money being transferred to NGOs who can utilize the money toward investments in biulding schools... ect. According to Jeffery Sachs, advisor to the Secretary General of the UN, it will take about $135 - 175 billion USD in order for much of Sub-Saharan Africa to escape the poverty trap and meet the MDGs by 2015. Records of previous initiatives, especially the Kyoto Protocol suggest that there simply isn't enough donor money. America alone spends trillions of dollars in a single month that go to the Iraq war, yet only 0.26 % od GDP goes to the protocol, when the goal was initially 0.7% of all developed countries' GDP.
4) Of course, governance is a huge issue and corruption is evident in a lot of regions. What I find bothersome is that the corruption in some regions are used as an excuse almost to not donate enough funds for countries that DO have efficient governance and are ready to invest in infrastructure and savings. That is just unfourtunate and I think officials in the IMF and World Bank need to take responsibility and do some work, focus on areas that want change to occur and are ready for the change. If these NGOs themselves are corrupt then what can we expect?
5) Change needs to be individual as well as collective. Every individual needs to be aware and be given the opportunitty to know what's going on.
** Of course, these are all of my own opinion. I am aware there are many more reasons as to why the situation in Sub-Saharan Africa continues. I personally don't even believe in aid, but I realized after awhile that money is needed and it's one of the only means of transferring money to that location. Also, I think that it's important to see each individual culture in its own terms; sometimes development seen as this science that once discovered fully, needs to be implied everywhere in the same format. Perhaps that's why it hasn't worked in Sub-Saharan Africa: because the same old levels of development are expected and until the extreme poor can't get on the FIRST rung of development, we don't do anything else to help them.
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Sangeeta
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Re: kusherki2004
December 14, 2007 - 04:49 PM
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When African men and women of ideas, who will give birth to new ideas, have fled to Europe and the United States, then the so-called African Renaissance cannot occur in Africa. It can only occur in Paris, London and New York. There are more Soukous musicians in Paris, than in Kinshasha; more African professional soccer players in Europe, than in Africa. African literature is more at home abroad than it is in Africa. In other words, Africans in Europe are alleviating poverty in Europe, not in Africa. Until the men and women of ideas — the true healers of Africa — start returning home, the African Renaissance and poverty alleviation will remain empty slogans. After all, the brightest ideas are generated and harnessed by men of ideas.
The intellectual capital needed to produce products and services will lead to the path of poverty alleviation. Intellectual capital, defined as the collective knowledge of the people, increases productivity. The latter — by driving economic growth — alleviates poverty, always and everywhere, even in Africa. Productivity is the engine that drives global economic growth.
Those who create new knowledge are producing wealth, while those who consume it are producing poverty. If you attend a Wole Soyinka’s production of Chinua Achebe’s "Things Fall Apart,” you consume the knowledge produced by Soyinka and Achebe as well as the actor’s production, much like I consume the knowledge and production of Bob Marley’s through his songs.
We will need wisdom, that which turns too much information — or information overload — into focused power, not only to process, but also to evaluate the overwhelming amount of information available on the Internet. This wisdom will give us the competitive edge and enable us to find creative solutions.
I think that is an important and wonderful point. Individuals need to take responsibility of their own actions and realize where their roots are; they need to be aware of their own light and the capacity they have to change. If these people went back and started to invest in Africa, in growing urban areas for example, there would potentially be economic growth in the region, greater number of jobs available for future graduates, and INVESTMENT.
This post was edited on: 2007-12-14 at 04:50 PM by: Sangeeta
This post was edited on: 2007-12-14 at 04:50 PM by: Sangeeta
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cris
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Re: MDG's - Where is Africa going wrong?
January 20, 2008 - 09:12 AM
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hello! I am a student to Canterbury Christ Church University and I'm doing a project at school! It's about access to,experiences with, and attitudes towards, digital technology such as computers
and the Web. There are lots of countries that face the technology problem, countries with low diffusion of information and communication. If anyone is from one of these countries and live in London or in cities next to Canterbury I would like to ask him/her a big favour....to let me take him a short interview about this...Or people who are not living in England can answer me on the e-mail.Please if someone could help. We live in a mad world....just say it all and someone will hear you!
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maxwell Adeo Adew
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Re: MDG's - Where is Africa going wrong?
May 22, 2010 - 11:48 AM
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i agree with you 100 percent. let us go back to drawing board and take the bull by the horn. until we stop looking for fish we will never know how to catch the fish our self.
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Adeoya w
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Anthony Lukwesa
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Re: MDG's - Where is Africa going wrong?
July 12, 2010 - 06:18 AM
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Africa lacks focussed leaders thats why these MDGs will never be realised...Very few African governments will achieve any one of them by 2015. The lack of empowerment capabilities such as entrepreneaurship amongst country men and women will cost many african governments to realise the MDGs. Unless, they put the people who put the interests of people that put them in office, the whole MDG thing will shall forever be a dream.
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Corbin Smith
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Re: MDG's - Where is Africa going wrong?
July 15, 2010 - 11:52 AM
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What Kusherki said can not be understated. Pouring money into a country is useless if you don't have a productive labour force. This kind of productive force will not happen over a few years of solely economic investment. What needs to happen is a serious cultural shift.
These communities need local leaders to inspire them and give them confidence to grow. If people start working together, peacefully, to create a better infrastructure and better schooling, each wave of new children will grow up more and more able to work productively in their newly developed economy.
But until there is a cultural shift, where they have peaceful, inspiring local leaders showing them what they can achieve, not much will happen.
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Mwaura Kaara
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Re: MDG's - Where is Africa going wrong?
July 29, 2010 - 04:32 AM
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Africa's underdevelopment and marginalization have defied much of the development policy experiments of the last three decades. Our continent is increasingly defined by foreign sketched and widely publicized pictures of starving children, warring communities, environmental disasters, grand corruption and despotic regimes. While some of these could be factual, it is important to affirm that these are not defining features of the continent. These are challenges to be overcome as Africa is also home to world beating athletes and resilient women and men that have continued to take their children to school and produce globally renowned intellectuals and professionals, marry and hold merry wedding ceremonies, celebrate death in a manner witnessed nowhere else in the world, make love and populate the continent, uphold a humanist culture and celebrate the dignity of their people.
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Opobo
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Re: MDG's - Where is Africa going wrong?
August 2, 2010 - 11:46 AM
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mhlalisincube wrote:
So much aid has been poured into Africa but surprisingly, the continent still remains the most underdeveloped. Where are we going wrong?
This post was edited on: 2007-06-22 at 12:12 PM by: mhla
You are very right there! That issue puzzles almost everyone and again you would ask yourself that where is Africa moving? For how long are we going to be depending on aids from developed countries.
The answer according to me is that we have lots of corrupt leaders and that is exactly why we are not able to channel any fund into sustainable development within the governments.
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Nodumo
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Re: MDG's - Where is Africa going wrong?
August 18, 2010 - 06:09 PM
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Your comments above made for some interesting reading. I am still rather new on this forum and I can't stop wondering why I hadn't joined any sooner.
Now to add my two cents worth to the topic at hand :
The M.D.G's are a very noble set of goals and targets. It is commendable how we as a species have managed to move away from the ideas and politics of old, when rciscm, war and descrimination where common practices that governments even included in their policies. It is a positive shift in the global mind set that makes us to long for a world after 2015.
But like all good intentions by human beings; there are always challenges and obstacles, namely the persistant, ever present evil that is greed and selfishness. Which often time cloud our judjement and produce disastrous results from those good intentions.
Africa has been failed by its leadership. Men who started out as celebrated liberation heroes have allowed greed to cloud their vision with disastrous outcomes. The M.D.G's in most parts of the continent have become like a fairytale.
Political stability, democracy, and all the liberties it entails, is the bed rock upon which a nation is built. In this light, it is clear that most, if not all African countries have gotten it wrong from the foundation! We can not begin to talk about eradicating povery and hunger for example, when an economy has collapsed because of miss magement, when the political climate is one that deters investors; Investors that in turn create jobs and help put food on the table for the man on the street.
In my view, to try and answer the question of where Africa is going wrong; I would say :
We need responsible leaders; Men and women who will put the betterment of the continent before personal glory and riches. Leaders who will create democratic systems that will be scantfied as holly and above all men. This is where we are going wrong!
If you look at the continent as a whole, one would see that South Africa is a shining beacon on the continent. It is a young democracy that has had more changes of leaders than most African states combined! It is not by chance that is well on its way to meeting most if not all of the M.D.Gs.
The rest of Africa should see this and follow suit. But there is hope yet for the rest of us in other parts of Africa. With young people like us getting involved and trying to make a difference where we can. We might not make it by 2015, but I strongly belive that the dawn of a new Africa is around the horizon. China did it, India did it, and so will Africa
Thank you...
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