Abstract

Those involved in the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) campaign routinely state Africa will miss all the MDGs. This paper argues that a series of arbitrary choices made in defining success or failure as achieving numerical targets for the Millennium Development Goals made attainment of the MDGs less likely in Africa than in other regions even when its progress was in line with historical or contemporary experience of other regions. The statement that Africa will miss all the MDGs thus paints an unfairly bleak portrait of Africa.