[afro-nets] Ghana gets a half billion - will this improve MDGs? (3)

["George Kent" <kent@hawaii.edu>]

Ghana gets a half billion - will this improve MDGs? (3)
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Regarding the recent grant to Ghana, as I see it, the Millennium Challenge Account (not to be confused with the Millennium Development Program) is a rather crude instrument used by the US to press poor countries to accept the neoliberal (here, meaning trade-centered) economic vision. I have little objection to trade when it is pulled in by poor people in poor countries, but it is questionable when it is pushed onto them so hard by rich countries.

Would it be worthwhile to write a systematic critique of the agreement, perhaps beginning with Niagia Santuah's observations?  It is important that the Millennium Challenge grant may be working at cross-purposes with the Millennium Development Program. Its Goal 1 is directed at reducing malnutrition among young children. As Niagia Santuah pointed out, this problem in concerned in northern Ghana where the child mortality rates are very high. What will be the contribution of the Millennium Challenge program to this part of the Millennium Development Program?

What is the level of funding for work on the Millennium Development Program's Goal 1 effort at reducing malnutrition? How does it compare with, and how does it relate to, the funding from the Millennium Challenge Account?

The real question is, whose agenda are any of these programs serving? Where is the voice of the needy themselves in their design?

Aloha, George
mailto:kent@hawaii.edu