UN Chief Urges Action As Africa Lags Poverty Goals

Ban said it was still possible for the continent to achieve Millennium Development Goals set in 2000 to halve global poverty by 2015.

Africa is falling behind United Nations goals to drastically reduce global poverty by 2015 and new challenges from rising food prices and climate change threaten to throw it completely off course, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon warned on Monday.

Addressing U.N. member states on Africa's development needs, Ban said it was still possible for the continent to achieve Millennium Development Goals set in 2000 to halve global poverty by 2015.

He called for intensified efforts by governments and donors to help Africa meet its development goals, especially at a time when rising food costs and the effects of climate change could push more people deeper into poverty.

Currently, he said, not a single African country will achieve all of the eight goals to reduce poverty and hunger, improve education, equality and health.

"I am convinced that through concerted actions by African governments and their development partners, the MDG's remain achievable," said Ban, who has chosen the poverty goals as the keynote theme of this year's annual General Assembly gathering of leaders of the 192 U.N. member states.

Ban said it would take $72 billion a year over the next several years to help Africa reach its development goals.

"This price tag may look daunting but it is affordable and falls within existing aid commitments," he said, noting that the world's industrial countries spent an estimated $267 billion last year on agricultural subsidies alone.

Ban appealed to rich donor countries to make good on their commitments made at a 2005 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland to double aid to Africa over the next several years.

There are concerns that the recent upheaval on global markets could dig into the aid budgets of the world's wealthiest donor nations. A $700-billion rescue plan by the U.S. government for troubled Wall Street amounts to 10 times the aid Ban called for in his speech.

AID COMMITMENTS

African Union chairman and Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete scolded rich countries for failing to honor their aid commitments to Africa.

"Unfortunately the resources being committed and being made available are not sufficient to lift Africa out of the poverty trap quickly," he told the U.N. meeting. "I'd like to take this opportunity to express Africa's disappointment at the failure of developed nations to honor their commitment to provide resources to deal with challenges of Africa's development."

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Africa was at a turning point with more countries showing higher growth rates. But he said they should guard against running up more debts that would require a new round of debt cancellation agreements.

"In future let us guard against too rapid and too costly public re-indebtedness," Sarkozy said. "Let us not set the stage today for a new debt crisis in 2030."

A recent U.N. report pointed to strong and sustained progress in reducing extreme poverty, but new estimates by the World Bank show the number of poor in the developing world is larger than previously thought at 1.4 billion people.

The estimates confirm that between 1990 and 2005 the number of poor people living in extreme poverty fell by over 400 million and the poverty rate is likely to fall by the targeted 50 percent below the 1990 rate by 2015.

Still, the World Bank has said that while fast-growing countries like China have seen poverty rates drop, progress has been less pronounced in Africa.