Not bad, could be better

It was declared in 2000 by the United Nations that 2015 be set as the target date by which third world poverty should be halved. Known universally as the Millennium Development Goals, MDGs, the program had specific aims in particular sectors especially in literacy and universal free education, health care, provision of water and protection of the environment, among others.
The MDGs were a product of the fresh interest in developing country issues and especially of Africa’s problems by major world figures including most notably, Britain’s Tony Blair and the UN’s former Secretary General, Kofi Anan, not to mention intense and surprisingly effective campaigning for the poor by pop personalities such as U-2’s Bono and Geldof of the Boomtown Rats.
The plan to halve third world poverty by 2015 also had its beginnings in the emergence of an Africa becoming increasingly democratized as a new generation of more pragmatic leaders finally saw the light and embarked upon serious economic and socio –political reforms.
Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, it is to be recalled, was commended warmly for having compiled a brilliant Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) which has since served as a road map on the long march toward not only economic stability but actually to historic double digit growth for several consecutive years. Some would say that Ethiopia’s economy has not moved forward even an inch and is in fact declining, with more and citizens falling below the poverty line. Significant others may also try to rationalize the accelerated growth rate by presenting the argument that all economic indicators were so low historically that the slightest improvement would register as compound growth rate.
Whatever the rationale, the UN has formally invited Ethiopia to present a report on the performance it has registered on the MDGs.
It should be a matter of national pride if not partisan gain, that Ethiopia should be among the few countries in Africa that is expected to meet most if not all of the MDG targets.
What will the progress report look like? The government is sure to be adequately armed with facts and figures that will portray an economy enjoying all the fruits of rapid development.
The delegation will report school enrollment rates up by as much as 150% in some regions and 50-70% nationally. Each, year more and more young females are attending regular school. Higher education placement has grown exponentially.
Access to health care has never been wider, with rural health care centers now found in the remotest of areas.
The nation’s road network is undergoing massive expansion. Since the MDG targets were adopted in 2000, road density has almost doubled.
Communication has shown much progress and technological development. If the current rate of growth in mobile and land line phone services continues for just three more years, Ethiopia will have more than made up for having introduced mobile phones more than a decade after most of Africa.
It seems like the report Ethiopia has been requested to submit will be a rather upbeat document which will show that the country has passed with flying colors. However, there is much more to truly empowering economic growth then dry figures and statistics.
The present stage of Ethiopia’s economy is also a bewildering arena of complex contradictions and desperate counter measures which when the boom has passed could threaten to boomerang. The main case in point is that in so many spheres the quantitative option has been chosen above the qualitative. We shall take education communication and health, all high growth sectors, as graphic examples of this predicament.
Ethiopia used to boast some of the finest secondary schools, colleges and other educational institutions on the continent. These were staffed by highly committed educators who have then and now graced eminent schools through out the world. The education system of Imperial Ethiopia was of a high standard. Its fatal drawback was its limited scope.
Today, Ethiopia probably has more colleges than any other African country but few of these so-called colleges can claim to be producing truly employable graduates. As ever, it is only the few naturally gifted, the family influenced and the plain lucky students that graduate with some resemblance of having acquired a college education. Things have become so torid that an employer rarely if ever, seriously reads an applicants ‘college’ degree (often misspelt) as it is fast becoming an irrelevant document.
What should be done is what has been done. In the USA, the U.K and most effectively in South Korea. This is to establish a League of Colleges accountable to the Ministry of Education, which regularly monitors its members so that none may tarnish the reputation of the whole. This measure should be complimented by a National College Board Examination to which all private and public higher education students must sit for at the end of their proscribed courses.
The privatization of education is one of the best things this administration has accomplished with great success. However, there is no way that this policy should allow for the privatization of educational standards.
The same remedy should be applied to the expanding health care sector where again, quality takes a back seat while quantity rides shotgun. Many, much too many clinics and hospitals are understaffed and/or poorly equipped.
The creation of a medical watch dog authority along the lines of a Board of Higher Education Institutions and the formation of a national barometer of medical practice standards would be a good beginning.
As for communication, it is hardly necessary to point out that for all ETC’s busy work expanding its network, what good are millions of phones if connections and service remain so disappointing?