The priority actions under this partnership are:
Priority Action 1: Ensure the finance and policy base for achieving the MDGs.
Priority Action 2: Accelerate the achievement of the food security targets of the MDGs
Priority Action 3: Accelerate the achievement of the health targets of the MDGs
Priority Action 4: Accelerate the achievement of the education targets of the MDGs
Background
At their Troika meeting in Addis Ababa in November 2008, African and European Ministers instructed Chefs de File to prepare comprehensive and precise Roadmaps to identify key deliverables, lead actors and financial resources for each of the eight thematic Partnerships of the Joint Africa EU Strategy.
The second Joint Expert Group (JEG) meeting for the Partnership on the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) took place in Pretoria and London, 24-27 March 2009. Participants began to elaborate a Roadmap of concrete deliverables, initally focused on a zero draft document as a basis for discussion.
The deliverables included in the Roadmap, as well as key issues to be addressed as the Partnership progresses are presented in the roadmap narrative.
Roadmap
It was agreed at the JEG meetings that the Roadmap should initially focus on a small number of priority deliverables, based on certain criteria, including:
· regional or continental in character;
· achievable by 2010 and able to deliver a significant impact;
· involve multiple players;
· require a commitment of financial and human resources (although not necessarily involving additional resources where substantial contributions have already been made).
The Roadmap will be a living document which will continue to evolve. It must capture action taken by lead actors and progress made, and should be dynamic in order to be useful as an accountability tool for Partnership members. It is also intended to be a means of advocating for policy measures and other concrete actions to achieve the MDGs, and therefore it needs to be kept short and accessible.
Finance
The Roadmap attempts to identify some of the significant financial resources which have been committed to the deliverables identified. However there are substantial gaps in this information and more precision is needed, both in identifying existing commitments, but in particular in defining current financing shortfalls. More work will be done to specify precise outstanding funding requirements needed to cover gaps in implemetation of Partnership activities.
In this context it is important to acknoweldge that there remain substantial financing gaps in the achievement of the MDGs in Africa. The September 2008 report of the the UN MDG Africa Steering Group included analysis of estimated public external financing needs to progress key elements of the MDGs in Africa. For example:
Estimated financing needs by 2010 from all funding sources
· Agricultural Productivity $ 8 billion p.a.
· Education $ 8.3 billion p.a.
· Health systems, child survival, maternal health $10 billion p.a.
· Family planning $ 1 billion p.a.
· HIV/AIDS $12 billion p.a.
· Malaria $ 2.4 billion p.a.
· TB $ 2 billion p.a.
The EC and EU collectively make very substantial contributions to all these areas. The Partnership must help ensure that commitments such as scaling up ODA to 0.56% GNI by 2010, are fulfilled; and that milestones towards the MDGs, such as those set out in the EU Agenda for Action, are met.
