Nine years ago this month, world leaders came together at United Nations Headquarters in New York to commit their countries to a number of poverty reducing targets known as the Millennium Development Goals, with a deadline of 2015 for achieving those goals. The UN has recently released The Millennium Development Goals Report 2009, giving an update on progress to date. Significant advances have been made, but the world is well behind schedule to meet the targets.
Between 1999 and 2005, the proportion of people living on less than $1.25 per day in Sub-Saharan Africa fell from 58% to 51%. Over the same time period the same proportion for South-Eastern Asia fell from 35% to 19% and for Eastern Asia from 36% to 16%. The proportion of undernourished people in Sub-Saharan Africa increased from 28% in 2004-2006 to 29% in 2008, reflecting a global increase in food prices.
The proportion of primary-school age children enrolled in a school in Sub-Saharan Africa increased from 58% in 2000 to 74% in 2007. Child mortality (the number of children dying before age 5) for Sub-Saharan Africa fell from 183 per 1000 live births in 1990 to 145 per 1000 live births in 2007. This compares with a rate of 6 per 1000 live births in developed regions. Maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in Sub-Saharan Africa fell from 920 in 1990 to 900 in 2005; this figure is 100 times as high as that for developed countries.