Original Research

Assessing Progress and Pitfalls of the Millennium Development Goals in Zimbabwe: A Critical Analysis

Shepherd Mutangabende, Elvin Shava
Africa’s Public Service Delivery & Performance Review | Vol 4, No 4 | a141 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.4102/apsdpr.v4i4.141 | © 2016 Shepherd Mutangabende, Elvin Shava | This work is licensed under CC Attribution 4.0
Submitted: 17 January 2017 | Published: 01 December 2016

About the author(s)

Shepherd Mutangabende, University of Fort Hare, South Africa
Elvin Shava, North West University, South Africa

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Abstract

Zimbabwe adopted the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) at their inception in 2000 and it has trends of its progress in its attempt to attain these MDGs as indicated in progress reports since 2004, 2010, 2012 and 2015. In these reports optimistic trends are chiefly found in MDG2 on universal primary education which is Zimbabwe’s pride in Africa, MDG3 regarding gender parity in schools and MDG6 on HIV and AIDS. The country continues to face its biggest challenges in attaining MDG1 which is eliminating extreme poverty and hunger and MDG5 which is increase nurturing mortality, whereas all the objectives under these goals are dubious that would be attained at the cut-off date. It was unfortunate that, the inception of the MDGs coincided with the deepening of socioeconomic, political and environmental crisis in the country which made it very difficult for Zimbabwe to accomplish all of its MDGs. The focal motive of this study was to check the progress, policies, programmes and strategies which were in place to promote the attainment of the MDGs from 2000-2015 and other strategies or policies in place to attain the SDGs 2016-2030. This paper recommended that there is need for institutionalisation of SDGs that is aligning them with Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Socioeconomic Transformation (Zim-Asset) cluster; for instance, value accumulation and beneficiation, nourishment security, poverty extermination, social services and strengthening partnership with all stakeholders. The research uses intensive secondary data analysis from various sources including government gazette, journal articles, e-books, and government website, reports, published and unpublished books.

Keywords

Millennium Development Goals; Sustainable Development Goals

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