Sub-Saharan African nations have not made enough progress to reach goals of halving poverty and reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS by 2015, despite success stories in some countries, a United Nations report said Wednesday, according to dpa. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was to submit the report to the summit of the world's eight most industrialized nations in Heiligendamm, Germany, to demand the G8 pay more attention to Africa. Poverty and hunger, and HIV/AIDS are among eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that were approved by the General Assembly in 2000 and are to be achieved by 2015. "At the midway point between their adoption in 2000 and the 2015 target date for achieving the MDGs, sub-Saharan Africa is not on track to achieve any of the goals," the report said. On poverty, the report said the proportion of people living on a dollar per day in sub-Saharan countries has declined from 45.9 per cent to 41.1 per cent since 1999. But in order to reach the goals, the current pace of poverty reduction would have to nearly double. The number of extremely poor people, existing on a dollar per day, has increased only marginally from 296 million in 1999 to 298 million in 2004, the report said, highlighting the fact that not enough progress has been made in fighting poverty. Progress to halve poverty in children under five has been "excruciatingly slow," the report said. The proportion of children under five who are underweight declined by only 0.01 per cent between 1990 and 2005. The report said some "major gains" in several areas have been achieved, but "even the best governed countries on the continent have not been able to make sufficient progress in reducing extreme poverty in its many forms." It said the number of AIDS deaths has increased, reaching 2 million in 2006, while HIV infection has risen faster than treatment services can be provided. Child mortality for those under five dropped from 185 deaths per 1,000 live births in 1990 to 166 in 2005. The drops "hardly make a dent in the objective of a two-thirds reduction by 2015," the report said. Sub-Saharan child mortality is twice the rate in developing countries. On education, the report said a 30-percent gap remains in the goal of universal primary education for all children. African countries have been able to enroll up to 70 per cent of all children from 2000 to 2005, the report said. The report noted some success stories in countries like Malawi, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Niger and Senegal. Those countries have scored in some of the eight development goals. The UN called on donors to increase the level of development aid to African countries, which it called insufficient.
