PDF (2.0 MB)

stance, NEPAD highlights agriculture and food security as one of keythematic areas of focus and has designed the Comprehensive AfricaAgriculture Development Programme (CAADP) whose aims are consistentwith the objectives of MDG 1 to reduce poverty and hunger.Similarly, the other MDGs that aim to achieve universal primary education,reduce child mortality, improve maternal health and combatcommunicable diseases all relate to different aspects of human developmentthat are at the heart of NEPAD. It is in this regard thatNEPAD has several programmes that specifically cater to promotingsuch objectives, a notable example being the Consolidated Plan ofAction (CPA) for Science and Technology intended to provide theknowledge that will backstop the educational, health and environmentalaims of the MDGs in Africa.In other words, given their common purpose and mutuality of objectives,successes recorded on the MDG front also contribute to theachievement of the NEPAD vision and vice versa. To start with, mostof us would agree that the MDGs have been successful in galvanizingpolitical support for human development in the sense of influencingpolicy discourse and as a basis for measuring progress in achievingconsensually agreed goals, targets and indicators.In this regard, and through our joint ECA-AUC-ADB and UNDP annualregional report on Africa’s progress towards the MDGs, we have seenthat Africa’s progress toward the MDGs has generally been positive,although performance has been mixed across indicators and countries.We can point, for instance, to the continent’s progress towardsuniversal primary enrolment which increased significantly from 65%in 1999 to 83% in 2009. Similarly the goal of gender parity at primaryschool level is on track, while women’s representation in parliamentincreased in over 80 percent of African countries between 1990and 2010. Advances in stemming the HIV and AIDS pandemic havebeen significant in the majority of African countries, both in terms ofpreventing new infections and in making Anti-Retroviral Treatment(ART) more readily available to infected people.Overall, however, the initial rapid progress in achieving the MDGswas to some extent been slowed down by the adverse effects of theinternational fuel, food and financial crises. However, the integrationof MDGs into national development strategies helped to mitigate theIntegrating Africa55