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African Development Report 2015 - Chapter 7: Eliminating extreme poverty: progress to date and future priorities
2015, the finishing line for the UN’s MDGs, is referred to as a ‘year for development’, encouraging policymakers to rethink development frameworks for the decade(s) to come. After fifteen years of implementing the MDGs, what efforts have African countries pursued so far? What worked and what are the remaining challenges? Compared to other developing regions around the world, Africa has made relatively limited progress in achieving the MDGs. Nevertheless, Africa has achieved significant gains in some areas, including the follow-ing: Improvement primary school enrolment; bridging the gender gap in primary school enrolment; female representation in national parliaments; reducing child and maternal mortality; and, reversing the trend of the spread of HIV/AIDS (UNECA, AU, AfDB, UNDP, 2015). What lessons can be learnt from the implementation of the MDGs, and, what are the remaining challenges for the continent to tackle over coming decades? The first part of this chapter discusses Africa’s progress towards, and shortfalls against, the MDGs. In the second part, we discuss the challenges Africa will need to tackle to overcome extreme poverty by 2030.