Africa Fails To Meet AIDS Goals

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon plans to ask leaders of the world's richest countries meeting in Germany this week to step up aid to Africa so the targets can be achieved.

"Despite faster growth and strengthened institutions, the continent remains off track to meeting the world's shared goals for fighting poverty in all its forms," Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro told a news conference launching the report.

While the proportion of people living on $1 a day has declined from 45.9 percent to 41.1 percent since 1999, the report said reaching the target of halving extreme poverty by 2015 requires that the current pace is nearly doubled.

Net aid to sub-Saharan Africa has increased by only 2 percent in real terms since 2005, Migiro said, excluding Nigeria, which received exceptional debt relief this year. The report said donors need to accelerate their plans to scale up assistance to maintain the credibility of their 2005 pledge to double aid to Africa by 2010.

"The upcoming G-8 summit provides an important opportunity for donor countries to lay out concrete timetables for how they will increase development assistance to each African country through to 2010 and 2015," she said.