Millennium Development Goals - part 2

What went wrong?

My previous blog on the MDGs gave a few figures surrounding water and sanitation for Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), but these figures do not represent the regional difference. Below figure 1 and figure 2 show a breakdown of country populations with access to improved water sources and sanitation sources respectively.

Figure 1 - Percentage of population with improved drinking water source, 1990-2008.

Source: http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/librarypage/mdg/mdg-reports/africa-

collection.html

Figure 2 - Percentage of population with improved sanitation, 1990-2008.

Source: http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/librarypage/mdg/mdg-reports/africa-collection.html

Figure 2 portrays how SSA made very little progress towards achieving the sanitation goal. However, many SSA countries made great improvements in their percentage of the population with access to an improved water source (figure 1). Despite increases in access to improved water sources, water still remains inaccessible to much of the population.

The two figures also show how regional differences need to be highlighted, and SSA should not be generalised. Not all SSA countries missed the targets greatly, for some countries there have been great successes. In 1990, only 43% of Ghana's rural population had access to an improved drinking water source, by 2006 this had almost doubled to 80% of the rural population. Also, 93% of the Senegalese population living in cities had access to improved water in 2006. As you can see it was not all doom and gloom for SSA countries, however, for the many countries who did not meet the targets, there are a variety of potential reasons.

Why did it go wrong?

There is a multitude of reasons as to why SSA did not meet the MDGs for both water and sanitation, below I have addressed the reasons I felt were crucial in SSA being unable to meet the MDGs.

Urban-rural divide.

The MDGs did a great job in reducing urban and rural disparities, however, the difference between the urban and rural is still great across access to both improved water and sanitation sources. In some rural areas of SSA, 40% of the population still relies on surface water, they have very little access to stand posts and water facilities, something which has barely improved over the last fifteen years. Conditions for sanitation in rural areas within SSA is in a far worse condition, as sanitation is deemed not as important as access to safe drinking water, meaning that the rural areas have lagged greatly behind urban areas. With still more than one-third of the population, mostly in rural areas, continuing to defecate in the open, rural SSA has a long way to go to catch up with the urban.

The cost of water. 

Implementing infrastructure and water provisions is a costly business, so much so that spending on the water sector in SSA is currently $3.6 billion a year, which is only one-fourth of what is required. For low-income countries, this high cost for improving water and sanitation sources seems even greater. SSA countries have received donations from many countries and NGOs, which has helped fund capital costs, however, many countries are still faced with maintenance costs, which can be upwards of 2% of GDP, which may not sound like a lot, but when coupled with other issues that require a great deal of spending and weaknesses in budgeting processes, it is a large expenditure for low-income countries.

Inefficiency

The third reason why SSA was unable to meet MDG 7 is due to and the cost of inefficiencies. It was reported that in 2010 approximately $2.7 billion was being wasted as a result of inefficient practice.  One of the greatest inefficiencies faced in SSA is the under-pricing of water services. In order for SSA countries to reach the cost-recovery threshold, they need to price a cubic meter of water at $1.00, however, average water tariffs are around $0.67 per cubic meter, resulting in an annual $1.8 billion loss in revenues. This loss has resulted in a reduction of investment in maintenance and enhancement of sanitation facilities in SSA. It is estimated that if all inefficient practices in SSA's water and sanitation sectors are eliminated, there would still be an annual $7.8 billion (1.2% of GDP) gap in finance.

Were the MDGs too ambitious?

Some believe SSA was set up to fail, the MDGs were made based on 1990s data. SSA had weak initial conditions in 1990, coupled with the unprecedented urbanisation and high population growth, which was far greater than anywhere else in the world, challenged SSA to meet the MDG targets.

Achieving the MDG for water and sanitation in SSA required an additional funding of $16.5 billion annually, which is around 2.6% of Africa's GDP - this level of funding often wasn't achievable for many of the SSA nations. 

In order for every country in the world to have met all 8 MDGs, it would have required an increase in global aid levels by $50 billion per year. Scholars have argued that this was a toxic way of looking at the MDGs, as it placed a heavy focus and reliance on aid, rather than countries being able to achieve the goals on their own accord, and frequently use the view that 'no amount of aid will make Africa grow at 7%' (Clemens and Moss, 2005:2). It is seen that the MDGs were too ambitious for many countries to financially achieve.

Future

SSA failing to meet the MDGs for water and sanitation was not because they failed, or there was a lack of effort, nor was that aid wasted, but perhaps because SSA is missing sustained support, 'development is a marathon, not a sprint' (Clemens and Moss, 2005:4). Perhaps the MDGs were designed not to be precisely met, but maybe a tool to improve conditions in some of the world’s poorest countries, which has happened.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are the future in reducing poverty. Having learnt from the success and failures of the MDGs, the SDGs are far more scientific, specific and measurable than the MDGs. The SDGs will be addressed in further detail later on in this blog series.