The Kenyan millennium development goals

  

Date Posted: 11/8/2012 5:20:08 AM

Posted By: vann  Membership Level: Gold  Total Points: 1015

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Millennium development goals are drawn from the actions and targets contained in the millennium declaration that was adopted by 189 nations and signed by 147 heads of governments during the united nation’s summit in September 2010.
The eight MDGs break down to 21 quantifiable targets that are measured by 60 indicators. Countries are supposed to look out and track the goals through appropriate indicators.

What are the goals?
1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
2. Achieve universal primary education
3. Promote gender equality and empower women
4. Reduce child mortality rates
5. Improve maternal mortality
6. Combat HIV/AIDs, malaria and other diseases
7. Ensure environmental sustainability
8. Develop a global partnership for development

Mdg 1: Eradicating extreme poverty and hunger
The government has formulated strategies to curb hunger by fulfilling the MDG goal of reducing the population who suffer from hunger by 2015.low GDP in the last two decades has slowed down and impact has been felt on the agricultural sector which is the main source of income for most Kenyans. The factors that impacted negatively on agricultural growth included:
a. Mismanagement of farmer support institutions that affected the areas of marketing, credit, seeds, and farm inputs.
b. Dumping of agricultural commodities, such as dairy, maize, and sugar in the local market.
c. Depreciation of the Kenya shilling resulted in large increases in the cost of imported agricultural inputs.
d. Reduction in donor support reduced resources available for investment in agriculture.
e. Decline in budgetary allocation to the agricultural sector.
Rural development programme has been expanded to fight the menace where young people are encouraged and trained in various sectors like farmers associations, credit and rural financial services, producer and processor groups etc to give them a foundation in poverty reduction.
To achieve the hunger reduction goal, the government will meet the cost of infrastructure, farmer support services and social welfare programmes; while smallholders will pay for materials and services directly

benefiting them, such as fertilizers, improved seed, and credit through the economic stimulus project. Government should ensure farmer access to inputs and services at affordable rates.

Mdg 2: Achieving universal primary education
The millennium development goal on education is to ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling.
The introduction of FPE in January 2003 has led to significant educational achievements. Enrollments in public primary schools increased significantly from. Despite this performance, primary education continues to experience a number of challenges, such as overstretched facilities, overcrowding in schools high pupil-teacher ratios, high cost of equipment for children with special needs, diminished support by communities, gender and regional disparities, increased number of orphans in and out of school as a result of HIV/AIDs, poor management, and internal inefficiency that negatively impacts on access, equity and quality.
In order to address the above challenges, the government is already undertaking
Certain measures such as providing additional support to low-cost boarding schools in ASALs; providing special capitation grants for special education; providing support to NFS institutions offering the primary school curriculum in slum areas; mobilizing resources from development partners in support of the FPE initiative; and improving school health and nutrition in collaboration with the ministry of health.
The government has also introduced economic stimulus project to upgrade at least two primary school in each constituency.

Mdg 3: Gender equality & empowerment of women
The millennium development declaration commits member countries to promote gender equality and the empowerment of women as effective ways to combat poverty, hunger and disease and to stimulate development that is truly sustainable.
Gross gender inequalities persist due to prevailing discriminatory practices, leading to inequality in opportunities, wage/employment, ownership of property, and access to education and training. Overall, women continue to have less access to social services and productive resources than men. Women remain vastly underrepresented in parliament and local authorities and account for 8.3% of the seats in the national assembly. In the recent past, the government has appointed women to key positions, but this is still below expectations. There are also large wage gaps and only a small proportion can be explained by gender differences in education, work experience or job characteristics.
Much has been done by the Kenyan government to counter the issue of gender,
For instance, marked progress has been made in increasing women’s participation in leadership and decision-making (e.g. In parliament, the public service including the judiciary, the police force and the local authorities). The free primary education programme has also accorded equal educational opportunities to boys and girls, resulting in almost gender parity in primary school enrollment and also gender disparity has been witnessed in every government ministry under the law that women take at least one third of leadership positions.
A wide range of interventions, coverage targets and costs has been proposed and fall under the five main categories:
a. Social mobilization, awareness creation and Sensitization.
b. Institutional strengthening and programme implementation,
(Lobbying and advocacy for gender sensitization.)
c. Building coalitions and mobilizing support for policy development, law reform, enactment and implementation.
d. Research, information, monitoring and reporting.

The strategies for mobilizing necessary resources should focus on increased budgetary allocations to the ministry responsible for gender, budgetary allocations in the sector ministries towards activities for mainstreaming gender within sectors, and the balance from international development partners as part of their commitment to the millennium declaration. Most Kenyan households are experiencing abject poverty, whose prevalence is higher among women, and should not therefore shoulder a big burden in the implementation of the recommended actions.

Mdg 4: Reducing child mortality

This goal aims at reducing mortality rates of infant children, however this has been dealt a blow as there is inequity in access to health care services while the cost of accessing health care is high especially for the poor. The opportunity is that the ministry of health is endeavoring to strengthen programmes that are currently supporting child health. These includes; immunization, control of diarrhea diseases and acute respiratory infections, nutrition HIV/AIDs, and malaria.
Effective low cost interventions available can prevent at least 2/3 of child deaths.
Some of these interventions are preventive such as breastfeeding, use of insecticide treated materials, complementary feeding, zinc and vitamin a supplementation, improved delivery procedures, and immunization.
The curative aspects include treatments such as oral rehydration therapy, antibiotics for sepsis and pneumonia, anti-malarial and newborn resuscitation. In addition, lack of improvement in child health indicators may be attributed to the risk of mother-to-child HIV/AIDs transmission coupled with other contextual HIV/AIDs and poverty synergies.
The interventions for both maternal and child health are essential and should not be financed by user fees as this discourages the poor from accessing the required services.

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