After 2015, then what? Africa in a post-MDGs era

In view of the under-achievement record of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), global policy makers have set out on a search for a more veritable replacement ahead of its 2015 expiration date. Designed in 2000 by developed countries on behalf of developing countries, the MDGs were collectively promoted as a near-final solution to the development quagmire that drowns a section of the globe. With most African countries at the bottom of the development ranking, the region’s leaders were all too eager to sign on to the MDGs. Across Africa, government representatives were quick to utter the initially unfamiliar acronym, especially in the hearing of donors.  After all, the donors were the ones who set the MDGs, the ones who wanted to spend their money on accomplishing these goals, and the ones who sent their monitoring and implementation team to Africa for follow-up.  And in that mindset lay perhaps the greatest…