How the Millennium Development Goals Are Unfair to Africa (Event)

William Easterly, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution presents a controversial analysis of the Mellinium Development Goals' treatment toward Africa. Easterly suggests that the development community predicts most African countries' to fail to meet the Millennium Development Goals. This results more from the design of the Goals than from unique deficiencies in Africa's development process. Those involved in the MDG campaign routinely state that "Africa will miss all the MDGs." While Africa will miss MDGs, Easterly argues that it will result from a series of arbitrary choices built into the Goals in such a way that "success" was less likely in Africa than in other regions. The statement that "Africa will miss all the MDGs" thus paints an unfairly bleak portrait of Africa. Danny Leipziger from the World Bank comments on Easterly's analysis to kick off an open discussion of the relationship between the MDGs and Africa.