Sub-Saharan Africa stood out as the exception in last week’s United Nations report on progress in raising living standards in developing countries.

The latest update on the UN Millennium Development Goals, which have a 2015 target date, says success has been achieved in reducing by half the worldwide percentage of people living in severe poverty.

About 18 per cent of the global population is living on less than $1.25 a day, compared with 36 per cent in 1990, the report states.

For sub-Saharan Africa, however, the rate of extreme poverty has fallen. It stood at 56 per cent in 1990 and has declined to 48 per cent this year. Moreover, the total number of abjectly poor Africans actually increased greatly during that same period — from 290 million to 414 million.

Asked at a press conference to account for Africa’s lagging performance, UN officials cited an upsurge in population, comparatively poor quality of governance, and the prevalence of conflict in the sub-Saharan region.

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“Sub-Saharan Africa faces serious challenges in terms of population growth,” said Holly Newby, chief data analyst for the Unicef. “It’s swimming upstream in striving to reduce poverty rates as the population soars.”

Economic growth in most African countries began to accelerate only relatively recently, said Shantanu Mukherjee, the Millennium Goals team leader at the UN Development Programme. GDP grew at an average annual rate of 2 per cent in sub-Saharan Africa from 1990 to 2000, increasing to 5.5 per cent during the 2000-2010 decade, Mr Mukherjee noted.

“It will take a longer time to kick in,” he said in regard to the correlation between economic expansion and poverty reduction.

Even as Africa is failing to reach most of the eight MDGs, donors are providing decreased amounts of aid to the continent, the UN update shows. It says net bilateral aid to Africa fell by 5.6 per cent last year.

Mr Mukherjee suggested that this decline may actually be a by-product of “good news” for Africa. International financial institutions provided large amounts of assistance in the 1990s and early 2000s to reduce the debt burden of many African countries, he noted.

“That’s no longer needed, and this is good news,” the UNDP specialist said.

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About one-quarter of African children are still going hungry, compared to one-third 25 years ago, according to the UN update. Maternal mortality rates also remain far higher in sub-Saharan Africa than in any other part of the developing world, the report says.

The goal of substantially improved access to safe drinking water also appears unlikely to be met in the region.

Achieving parity

Sub-Saharan Africa has, however, made satisfactory progress in controlling the spread of HIV/Aids and in achieving parity between boys and girls in primary school enrolment. Globally, five of the eight development goals, initially set in 2000, have already been met or appear within reach, UN officials say.

“We did make a difference,” declared Keiko Osaki-Tomita, lead author of the new report. “We have saved so many millions of lives.”

But some analysts question the reliability of the statistics the UN cites in measuring movement toward the goals. They note that data on poverty rates for many countries was last reported three or more years ago. For example, Mr Mukherjee told The EastAfrican that recent statistics for Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda are not available.

And where data does exist, it may not be accurate, cautions Amanda Glassman, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Centre for Global Development.

“Despite a decade of rapid economic growth in most countries,” she notes in regard to Africa, “the accuracy of the most basic data indicators such as GDP, number of kids attending school, and vaccination rates remains low, and improvements have been sluggish.”