‘Poverty impeding achievement of MDGs in Africa’
The Minister of Gender, Children and Social Protection has noted that poverty is impeding the achievements of most of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in Africa.
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Identifying women as the poorest, Nana Oye Lithur called on governments to empower them with economically viable ventures to rescue them from poverty.
These formed part of a statement titled; “Gender equality, development and peace for the twenty-first century,” Nana Oye presented at the ongoing Conference on the Status of Women (CSW), at the United Nations (UN) headquarters in New York. It began on March 10 and would end on March 21, 2014.
The theme for this year’s meeting is, "Challenges and achievements in the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals for women and girls" and it is being attended by over 6,000 delegates made up of ministers responsible for gender issues, gender-based non-governmental organisations and other UN entities.
Nana Oye said women made up about 70 per cent of the global 1.4 billion poor people, and stressed that the situation needed to be remedied.
She expressed optimism that when Africa addressed gender issues, “we will achieve the MDGs.”
Ghana’s achievements
On Ghana’s achievements on the MDGs, Nana Oye said the country had made remarkable progress towards achieving the MDGs and made specific mention of MDG1 which she said the country was on track to achieve by reducing by half, the proportion of the population living in extreme poverty by 2015.
“The national poverty rate of people living below the upper poverty line has dropped from 51.7 per cent in 1991 to 28.5 per cent in 2006, while extreme poverty incidence reduced from 36.5 per cent to 18.2 per cent within the same period” she said.
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She mentioned some interventions instituted to reduce poverty as the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty Programme (LEAP) and the labour intensive public works programme, which is being implemented by the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development to create employment opportunities for rural poor women. She said the programme was being implemented in 40 districts across the country.
Health
In the area of health, Nana Oye said malaria continued to be the leading cause of mortality and morbidity among children under five and pregnant women. However, she said notable progress was being made against the disease through a multi-intervention approach by the National Malaria Control programme (NMCP).
On HIV and AIDS, she said Ghana was on track to potentially meet all the 2015 MDG HIV goals.
Speakers from Kenya, South Africa and other African countries also called for more economic support for women to improve on their social status.