Friday 4 April 2008

Making progress in the fight against poverty in Ghana

According to a UN report launched in February and circulated today – the 2007 Ghana National Human Development Report "Towards a More Inclusive Society", Ghana is set to become the first African country to meet the first Millennium Development Goal of halving poverty: if current growth rates are maintained, the poverty rate would be halved by 2009 – 6 years ahead of the target.

This is a remarkable achievement, and should be celebrated and learnt from. It is not a coincidence the Ghana also recently won recognition for being among the 10 fastest reforming countries in Africa in terms of the ease of doing business. It was also the first country to submit itself for review under the African Peer Review Mechanism – the Africa-led process for driving good governance.

But much remains to be done, not least the high level of poverty and social exclusion in the three northern regions of the country (poverty reduction has been more significant in cocoa producing regions). The challenge is to ensure all of Ghana’s people are able to participate in and benefit from the opportunities that growth brings.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Interesting blog.

Anonymous said...

Hope one day Afric will be out of the poverty. Some countries like India seem to be doing worse than Africa. it's a shame when most of the world's population live below the poverty line.