As world leaders prepare for next week’s Millennium Deve lopment Goals (MDG) Summit at the UN in New York, a new research released Thursday by Britain’s leading think- tank on international development, the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), names Ghana as the country that outper formed all other countries around the world by reducing hunger.
Ghana outperformed all other countries around the world by reducing hunger by ne arly three-quarters, from 34 percent to 9 percent, between 1990 and 2004, and it will achieve MDG 1 before 2015, said the report.
It listed Ghana among the top five performers in the world in agricultural growt h.
The MDG Report Cards presents an analysis of progress on the MDGs and a set of l eague tables of selected indicators. It shows where substantial advances have been made, as well as inequities and uneven progress f or seven MDGs.
According to the report, low-income countries, especially those in Africa, tend to rank top on absolute progress, whereas middle-income countries tend to do better at closing the gap.
Many other African nations have made considerable progress, the report notes. Te n African countries, including Ethiopia, Egypt, and post-conflict Angola , have already halved their absolute poverty levels. Angola and Niger hav e reduced their under-five mortality ratios by more than 100 per 1,000 deaths in less than two decades.
The West African nation of Benin ranked in the top ten in education improvements , with school enrolments increasing from 43 to 83 percent between 1992 and 2007.
The study released Thursday cover Ghana, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Costa Rica, El Sal vador and Ethiopia.
”This report recognises -and backs up with data – the real progress that even m any of the poorest countries are making,” Mark Suzman, director of policy, advocacy, and special initiatives for the Global Development Programme a t the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation said in the statement.
”Itâ?s essential that the international community, supporting locally develope d country plans, continue to join efforts to make progress against MDG targets for the next five years,” it added.
This research was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the UN Mille nnium Campaign.
World leaders established the MDGs in 2000 to guide efforts to significantly red uce poverty and its root causes by 2015.
Deliberately ambitious, the MDGs have provided a global agenda that has galvanis ed international action towards agreed indices of change.
