ABSTRACT
Developing countries and the international development community are presently increasing and redirecting their resources in order to achieve various development objectives such as reductions in poverty, hunger, and malnutrition. At the United Nations Millennium Summit in September 2000, world leaders made a huge commitment to reducing poverty. As part of the process, specific indicators were adopted for measurement of quantifiable progress, and an agenda was enacted for reducing poverty, and its causes and manifestations, including eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). 1 At the Monterrey Conference of 2002, rich countries renewed their pledge to increase their development assistance, raising it from 0.4 percent in 2004 to 0.7 percent of their GDP (United Nations 2001). In 2005, the UN Millennium Project, headed by Jeffrey Sachs, also called for a “big push” in donor support to meet the Millennium Development Goal challenge. In the same year, the Commission for Africa asked rich countries to double their aid to Africa and cancel the debts of poor African countries (Commission for Africa 2005).
