The UN millennium goals – Is an improvement of institutions the solution?

Introduction and a presentation of the problem

The UN millennium development goals (MDG) include reducing poverty, ensuring primary

education for all children, eliminate gender inequality in all types of education, reduce the

mortality rate for children under five by two thirds, reduce the maternity mortality rate by

three quarters, halt and try to reverse the spread of HIV/ Aids, malaria and other major

diseases, ensure the sustainable development of the environment and amongst other targets

halve the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and finally to

create a global partnership for development.1

In later years, it has been recognized that many

countries will not be able to reach the MDG s, there has been huge advantages but still one

mother dies in childbirth every minute, the goal to reduce maternity mortality will not be met

even 2020 or 2030. The British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, stated the following when

addressing the United Nations about the MDG s:

“Facing betrayal of the Millennium Development Goals, we say again we will come, but

many continue to die while we wait. And I believe our greatest enemy is not war or inequality

or any single ideology or a financial crisis: it is too much indifference”. (25 September

2008)2

The above is probably true; this essay argues further that one of the greatest threats is

poor quality of government and poorly functioning institutions. If the institutions of aid

recipient countries were strengthened and corruption were reduced, the aid might help more

than what is possible today.

This essay will attempt to analyse the Swedish aid to two sub-Saharan countries, Namibia

and Malawi. The question I will try to answer is the following: How can Swedish aid be more

effective in order to reach the MDGs? In particular, this essay is concerned with the pre-

conditions for these two countries and how these affect the successfulness of Swedish aid.

Pre-conditions is here thought of as; how good institutional quality the countries had before

they began to receive Swedish aid and if that quality have affected the successfulness of the

Swedish aid.

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