Ghana: From MDGS to SDGs
Ghana’s achievements of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are mixed; halving extreme poverty, halving the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water, achieving universal primary education and gender parity in primary school while leaving significant gaps in other areas.
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Achievements
HIV prevalence reduced from 3.6 per cent to 1.3 per cent by 2013, mobile telephone subscriptions increased from about 1.26 per 100 inhabitants in 2001 to 114.8 per 100 inhabitants in 2014, while Internet subscription rose from 0.15 per cent in 2000 to 18.9 per cent of the population in 2014. The ability to half poverty is in itself significant given that over 20 years, extreme poverty levels only reduced from 56 per cent in 1990 to 48 per cent across sub Saharan Africa.
Slow progress
“However, slow progress has been made towards the targets of achieving full and productive employment, equal share of women in wage employment in non-agriculture sectors and women’s involvement in governance, reducing under-five and child mortality, reducing maternal mortality, and reversing the loss of environmental resources and improving sanitation,” according to the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC) and partners.
Achievements in gender parity in kindergarten, primary, junior and senior high schools notwithstanding, the progress made in the proportion of female Members of Parliament has been marginal, from 8.3 per cent in 2008 to 10.9 per cent in 2013, while women’s access to wage employment in non-agricultural sectors rose from 25.4 per cent in 2006 to 30.5 per cent in 2013.
Health goals
The inability to fully achieve the health-related goals calls for accelerated progress. Child mortality, for example, reduced from 122 deaths per 1,000 live births in 1990 to 60 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2014, but still short of the target of 40 deaths per 1,000 live births. “Institutional maternal mortality ratio fell from 216 per 100,000 live births in 1990 to 144 per 100,000 live births in 2014, short of the global target of 54 per 100,000 live births in 2015.”
Remaining gaps
To address the remaining gaps, the United Nations in 2010 set up a working group of 70 countries to propose a new post-2015 global development framework called the Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs) (2016 – 2030). Ghana, through the National Development Planning Commission, took an active part in these global conversations which then dove-tailed into country-based consultations to formulate the post-2015 agenda. With 17 goals, the SDGs have more than double the goals of the MDGs, and about eight times the number of targets (169).
Tweaks
All the MDGs have been adopted with minor tweaks in some instances. While the MDGs focused almost exclusively on maternal and child health, malaria, HIV and tuberculosis, the SDGs acknowledge a broader goal on ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for all at all ages. Promotion of lifelong learning opportunities has also become an addition to the goal to access and promote equity in quality education, especially primary. In addition, there are goals about access to sustainable modern energy. Other goals pertain to conservation and sustainable use of the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development.
Ghana’s involvement
According to the NDPC, the Ghana-based consultations and subsequent contributions to the global development agenda occurred in three phases.
“The first phase covered persons living with disabilities (PWDs), women, youth, traditional authorities, private sector, and academia principally from the three northern regions of Ghana. The second phase of the consultations consisted of a series of focus group discussions with 15 communities from all the 10 regions of Ghana, while the third phase targeted professional groups. The community focus sought to ensure that the voices of marginalised groups counted in the global discussions on the “The World We Want”. Social media tools, such as Facebook, mobile phone text messaging, radio and television were also employed to further public contributions.”
Among lessons learnt from the MDGs needed to foster better implementation of the SDGs are the following; more deliberate implementation strategy including more effective allocation of resources, stronger partnerships with development agencies, and proactive regular country-based measurement of progress inter alia, while holding itself accountable to its goals globally.