These Millennium Development Goals 2

For low-income countries the MDGs for now remain the closest to the Marshal Plan of 1947. My reference to the Marshal Plan is necessitated by the fact that by the end of the Second World War, Western Europe was left in much the same ruins that most low-income countries (LICs) were left in by their retreating colonial masters. In response to the treat of soviet expansion into Western Europe, and to the need to create markets for US business and products, the US Government passed the European Recovery Act (1948), also called the Marshall Plan. The act required European nations ravaged by war to create a plan for their economic reconstruction while the US provides the assistance- 13.3 billion dollars (without conditions) over a period of 4 years beginning from 1948. This was the beginning of International Development Aid as we have come to know it, and it was never, and would never be determined by any altruistic reasons but by the self- interests of those who provide the funds for this aid. The IMF, the World Bank were created at the instance of the USA and were used to perfectly execute the Marshal Plan, but when it came to the turn of LICs, aid and loans were tied to conditions that drove these nations deeper into poverty, and they were never asked to create their own plan for poverty alleviation. The United Nations System (UN) was created by those who won the 2^nd World War to maintain the balance of international power, and this is the reason why one shouldn't be surprised when in many occasions the UN, WHO, WB, IMF, USAID and DFID have promoted and implemented common strategies- strategies that have continued to make may nations LICs.

The MDGs supported by the UN, the World Bank and most international development organizations are laudable, but there is growing skepticism over their realization, at least in Africa. The foremost MDG is the halving of the proportion of populations who live in extreme poverty, but three years into their implementation, poverty in Africa increased, while in other regions it declined. The Millennium Project (2006) reports that between 1990 and 2002, average overall incomes increased, average number of people in extreme poverty declined, average child mortality and maternal mortality rates declined.  But these averages hide the real situation on ground- a fact acknowledged by the Millennium Project. MDG efforts have benefited some countries more and in the same countries have benefited the middle class more, and marginalizing the poorest further. This is because the World Bank, the UN, the WHO and their key benefactors continue to see and treat LICs as a homogenous entity, and strategies developed in New York and Geneva are expected to work in the same way in Nigeria as in Malawi because both are African nations. It seems to me that the ultimate goal (beyond the MDGs) is free trade- a euphemism used in place of an unfettered access to the markets, natural and human resources of LICs. The time has come for LICs to look inwards.