Goal 8: Global Partnerships

Many of the poorest nations will not experience significant development without additional foreign assistance.  They face overwhelming tasks—combating major health problems, expanding educational opportunities, enhancing infrastructure, reversing environmental damage, and reforming security and legal systems.  Yet with delicate economies and debt repayments, there are very little funds available for such problems.

Millennium Development Goal 8 aims to increase assistance to help the poorest nations escape this cycle of underdevelopment.  It encourages greater foreign aid, better trade policies favoring poorer nations’ goods, easier debt relief, and continued expansion of information and communication technology to help in development.

Foreign aid remains inadequate and is threatened by the recent global economic downturn.  Significant investment and public donations will be needed to meet Goal 8 by 2015.

Learn how you can help.

TARGET 1: Address the special needs of the least developed countries, landlocked countries, and small island developing states

Foreign aid is essential for progress in the poorest countries.  Developing nations’ income from taxes and tariffs alone is insufficient to support overwhelming needs in health, education, infrastructure, and security.  Landlocked and small island nations are particularly hard off.  Landlocked nations lack seaports to facilitate exportation of goods, while small island nations must import a disproportionate amount of goods.

DONOR AID IS FAR BELOW TARGETS. According to the United Nations target, rich nations need to give 0.7% of their national income to help developing nations.  However, current aid levels are less than half of this.  On average, out of every $100 of national income, rich nations give only 30 cents to help developing nations.  Only Denmark, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden have met UN targets in aid.

FOREIGN AID IS INCREASING, BUT TOO SLOWLY. Aid from rich nations to poor ones continues to rise, reaching nearly $120 billion in 2008.  However, despite promises from the richest nations to increase aid further, actual contributions have not met these promises.  The recent economic downturn has hurt contributions even further.

TARGET 2: Develop further an open, rule-based, predictable, non-discriminatory trading and financial system

In order to encourage economic growth in the least developed nations, international trade policies have increasingly been designed to encourage people in richer developed nations to buy goods from the poorest nations.

ELIMINATING TAXES ON POOR NATIONS’ GOODS HELPS STIMULATE POOR ECONOMIES. When taxes (tariffs) are placed on imported goods, these goods become more expensive, encouraging buyers to purchase domestic goods instead.  In order to encourage buyers in the rich nations to purchase goods from the least developed nations, trade policies have increasingly allowed for the importation of poor nations’ goods without the addition of such taxes.  The number of goods that are imported from poor countries without such taxes is increasing steadily.

TRADE POLICIES PROLONG DEPENDENCY ON AGRICULTURE. The fewest importation taxes are placed on agricultural goods from poor nations.  As a result, the least developed nations have less economic incentive to develop industrial goods, since industrial goods are not as easy to sell internationally.  These nations then remain dependent on an agricultural economy, which is much more vulnerable to price swings and climate changes such as droughts and floods.

TARGET 3: Deal comprehensively with developing countries’ debt

For several decades, some of the poorest nations have been forced to make endless service payments on international debt, leaving no money to support programs in health, education, infrastructure, and security.

CONDITIONS FOR DEBT RELIEF HAVE BECOME MORE FLEXIBLE. Historically, in order to qualify for debt relief, a country had to meet many strict and sometimes seemingly impossible benchmarks.  In the last decade, these benchmarks have loosened significantly.

MANY OF THE POOREST NATIONS NOW HAVE DEBT RELIEF. These countries now do not have to service their debt and can instead devote this money to important development projects within their borders.

TARGET 4: In cooperation with the private sector, make available the benefits of new technologies, especially information and communications

The expansion of the Internet in the developing world is revolutionizing business, education, commerce, and communication.  However, even where the Internet remains unavailable, mobile phones have proven to be life-changing tools—providing assistance in banking, news, health data recording, and disaster management.

ACROSS THE DEVELOPING WORLD, INTERNET USE IS EXPANDING. Highest rates of use are in Latin America and Eastern Europe, where nearly 1 in 4 people use the Internet.  In 5 years, Internet use has tripled in the developing world.

CONTINUED DISPARITIES EXIST IN INTERNET USE AND QUALITY. In rich nations, 2 out of 3 people use the Internet.  But in many poor regions like sub-Saharan Africa, less than 1 in 25 people is online.  Rurally, Internet use is even lower and is frequently burdened by slow data transfer.

MOBILE PHONE USE IS RAPIDLY INCREASING EVERYWHERE. Over 1 in 3 people living in the developing world now owns a mobile phone, including 1 in 4 people in sub-Saharan Africa.