This paper will discuss millennium development goals progress. First, we will define millennium development goals, the general outline of millennium development goals and the analysis of the progress in two developing countries; Kenya and Tanzania. The two have achieved these goals at different degrees due to prevailing circumstances and political will.

The goals that were approved at the united nations by governments in the year 2000 during the month of September with the objective of improving the welfare of the people by managing and controlling diseases, ensuring sustainable development and education for all, hunger and poverty reduction, maternal and child mortality reduction are known as Millennium Development Goals. They are eight of them and are listed in order from goal one to goal eight as follows; hunger and poverty eradication, universal primary education achievement, empowering women and promotion of gender equality, child mortality reduction, improving maternal health, fight against malaria and HIV/AIDS, having sustainable environment and ensuring there is a developed global partnership that brings development. For developing countries to achieve their MDGs, developed countries will have to intervene by providing support to them in terms of trade, aid, investment and debt relief. Focusing this paper in East Africa, we will look at two east Africa countries namely Tanzania and Kenya. First, we study Kenya’s progressing in achieving Millennium development goals.

Kenya’s economy has remained stagnation for the last two decades in terms of economic growth. The annual population growth rate was placed at 2.5 percent higher than the annual economic growth rate, which was 1.5 percent between 1997-2002. The efforts to recover the economic growth fail because of failure to improve the country’s savings and investment record. The average rate of domestic savings was 13.1 percent in the year 2000-2002. As a percentage of GDP in 2003, public gross fixed capital information (GFCF) was 2.1 percent. Though economy seems to recover, it was still small to meet the growth rate necessary for the implementation of activities related to Millennium Development Goals before 2015.

Restoring Kenya’s economy became the NARC government agenda, to be able to achieve this under the economic recovery strategy (ERS); they needed to create wealth and reduce poverty through job creation. There are four pillars that build ERS strengthening the institutions of governance, investing in human capital of the poor, expansion and restoration of infrastructure and restoration of economic growth within the context of sustainable macroeconomic framework. Socio-economic as agenda of ERS focuses on trimming inequalities in access to productive resources and equity. Promotion of sustainable management of resources e.g. forests, water and land that the poor depend on. Features of a stable macroeconomic environment are; health balance of payments, reduction in net domestic borrowing, a decline in fiscal imbalances and low inflation.

There has been a widespread world concern on the human condition, this lead to the establishment of Millennium declaration that which urges the governments to come up with actions that bring improvements in human welfare by the year 2015. Kenya held the first stakeholder workshop in 2002; September to deliberate on millennium development goals. This gave birth to the national task force that was in charge of MDG campaign and preparation of the first report concerning the status of MDG in Kenya. This was a sad report as indicated that Kenya was in a position of not being able to achieve such goals with their current constrains on resource and the environmental policy.

The Kenyan government came up with the planning process that was outlined in three stages. The first stage was conducting needs assessment that would identify public investments and bring a comparison of the present situation with MDG targets. Long-term policy plan was to be developed for achievement of MDGs came at second stage. Thirdly was reviewing of medium-term strategies and that was to be done in line with MDG long-term plan.

The Kenya’s population growth rate per annum decreased from 3.9 percent during 1969-1979 to 2.5% in the year 1989-2000. The features of the country’s population was shown by increasing infertility rates, declining growth rates due to HIV/AIDS prevalence, low and declining life expectancy, high mortality rates and infant mortality and death rates were also high. In 2000, the poverty index was estimated at 56% over the whole population. In 2003, under-five mortality was 115 per 1000 live births whereas infant mortality was 77 per 100 live births. Deliveries done on health facilities were only 40% and 414 per 100,000 was estimation for maternal mortality. There was a tremendous decrease in HIV/AIDS prevalence from 14% (about two years earlier) to 6.7% in 2003 marking a great improvement.

The same year 2003 recorded an improvement in the net enrolment for primary education from 93% in 2002 to 104%. The girls’ net enrolments were lower compared to the overall mean, and the regional disparities were huge. In urban areas, the access to safe water is presently estimated at 89.7 percent compared to 43.5 percent in rural areas. There was a decline in water resource management investments in the 1990s that transformed to reduction in the percentage of the population with access to potable water.

Climate change has a lot of impacts to the people of Kenya given that large proportion of the country is semi-arid with low precipitation and high temperatures. This is because the agricultural sector, which supports 80% of the population, suffers a lot under such climatic conditions (Kabubo-Mariara, 2007). The vulnerability of Kenya to climate change is high due to low capacity to adapt, the poverty levels, and high dependence on natural resources that will eventually derailed the achievement of millennium development goals.

The following are some of the challenges of achieving MDGs in Kenya; lack of enough resources to finance the millennium development goals in the country, for example, according to needs assessment 2005, 4.1 trillion is needed for funding MDGs. The technological transfer in terms of food production from developed countries to developing countries has been slow. There is a great regional disparity on some MDGs and the data for reporting and tracking on MDGs is not enough. Failure of developed countries to honor the millennium declaration of availing 0.7% of the GNI in financial resources for MDGs in developing countries. The farm inputs are expensive, and the food prices are high.

The republic of Tanzania is continuously making good progress in terms of poverty eradication and national growth. The two visions; development vision 2025 (URT 1999) and vision 2020 (RGZ, 2002a) for mainland Tanzania, and Zanzibar respectively had one goal to transform Tanzania to a middle-income country whose human development is high.

In terms of poverty eradication, in Tanzania mainland there is the slight reduction of people living below the poverty line per month from 35.7% in 2001 to 33.6% in 2007. Despite this, the population growth rate that is about 2.9 percent is not compensated, and 37% of the population still falls below the poverty line. The same applies to Zanzibar where survey indicates that there is high poverty level. During 2005 and 2007, the GDP of Zanzibar increased by 12.8%, the unemployment rate decreased by 21.4% thus we can see that the economy of Zanzibar has grown. Based on 2005 survey, Tanzania’s achievement rate was about 50 percent when compared to 2015 targets. Thus, the government of Tanzania has done much in terms of reducing unemployment rate and at the same time creation of job opportunities. To improve food productivity, the government of Tanzania has subsidized fertilizers for farmers and she has embarked on irrigation, which is a key factor in enhancing food security. Furthermore, in line of poverty reduction and an economic booster, an initiative coined “kilimo kwanza” was launched in 20009.

Observation on several indicators shows that Tanzania has done well in terms of achieving universal primary education. The net enrolment ratio shows that in 2000, it was 57.1 for the mainland Tanzania to 67 for Zanzibar. The same figures rose to 94.8 percent and 77 percent for mainland Tanzania and Zanzibar respectively (URT 2006 MDG). In 2008, the net enrolment ratio for mainland increased to 97.2 whereas for Zanzibar it went up to 83.4 percent. Therefore, we can see that Tanzania is on its way to achieving 100 percent target by 2015 in terms of net enrolment despite challenges. These improvements are because of implementation of primary education development plan (PEDP), contribution of parents to enrolment, increased awareness against child labor which is a key factor in the increase of school drop outs, poor performance and low level of enrollment, improved teaching and learning environment and free primary education (URT 2004a). A number of students were also completing class seven and going to form one increased.

In a bid to empower women and achieve gender parity, various indicators will be studied one of them being ratio of boys to girls in primary, secondary and tertiary institutions. Gender balance then to decline with the transition because, during enrolment to primary schools, the ratio of boys to girls seem equal but during the transition to secondary it reduces. In 2007, the proportion of girls in secondary school rose to 46.8 percent from 43.2 percent in 1992 while in tertiary institutions it was 34% in 2007 and 20% in 1990s. In terms of wage employment, the proportion of women is still low as of the paid employees, it only comprises of 30 percent. Males also spend less time on unpaid work unlike women (5 and 15 percent respectively). The constitution of Zanzibar and Tanzania has an affirmative action to deal with gender balance. By institutionalizing measures to implement Beijing platform for action (BPA) and 1979 convention on the elimination of discrimination against women (CEDAW), women in the political field has increased.

The government is promoting gender balance in subject specialization through girl’s science camps to encourage girls to take mathematics and science courses. The employment policy of 2008 and the 2007 National employment policy have put emphasis on equality in employment opportunities for both women and men. Youth Employment Action Plan and the National employment creation program have one agenda of enhancing gender balance.

MDGs goals; reduction of child mortality, maternal health improvement and combating HIV/AIDS, other disease and malaria have an existing relation. Infant mortality and life expectancy has been triggered by HIV/AIDS, TB with serious economic and demographic impacts on productivity. Stunting and malnutrition are not only because of the deficiency in nutritious food and high levels of food poverty but also weak maternal health and low education. The government has done a great work in a bid to curb maternal mortality by integrating maternal audit in all health facilities, which provide delivery service. They have also helped commemorate maternal deaths by establishing White Ribbon Day. The governments also launch a five-year strategic plan that focuses on TB through strengthening of managing TB levels, increasing case detection and cure and developing multi-drug resistant tuberculosis. Zanzibar government has put in place measures for malaria control inform of a strategic plan which will not only provide a guideline towards achieving this, but also long lasting solutions e.g. treated nets, residual spraying. Under this program 73.4 percent of children, less than five and74.2 percent of the mothers slept under insecticide treated nets. To combat HIV, AIDS prevalence the government of Zanzibar has established HIV strategic plan. Others include the Zanzibar AIDS commission responsible for bringing down the infection rate.

In matters of environmental sustainability, a number of Acts have been put in place to deal with environmental management, control and prevention of pollution, environmental standards, waste management, etc. The strategies for environmental management majorly evolve around areas and sectors such as coastal areas, pastoral and agricultural land, forests and water, biodiversity and pollution, arid lands, encroachment of the desert, wetlands and mountainous lands. The government has urged efficiency increase in the power generation system that are in place by improving distribution and transmission systems and re-powering, efficiency of conversion of charcoal kilns should be improved, use biomass, photovoltaic and wind energy.

The government of Tanzania experienced numerous challenges towards achievement of these goals. These include low level of productivity in the agricultural sector attributed to insufficient access to inputs, credit, lack of experience and low education. The use of modern methods of farming has experienced slow pace. Poor road networks especially feeder roads that would enhance faster movement of farm products to areas where they are in demand. One of the challenges in education sector is quality education, the government has to put in place various inputs and resources such as improved teachers’ houses, sanitary facilities, administration blocks, laboratories and library for quality education to be attained. The government also should ensure quality and adequate human resource; teacher recruitment should be in line with the motivation. Inadequate human resource for health as there is only 35 percent of the required skilled workers available.

The difference in achievement of these millennium development goals between Kenya and Tanzania is majorly due to political instability. During the 2007/2008, Kenya experienced one of the greatest challenges in its economy. The post election violence saw the country’s economy declining drastically thus hindering the progress of achieving the MDGs especially poverty reduction, education and environmental sustainability. The indicator that while Tanzania was enjoying its political stability and progress in achieving its MDGs, Kenya lagged behind.