The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are unlikely to be met by 2015, even if huge increases in development assistance materialize. The MDGs are a set of quantitative, time-bound targets for indicators such as poverty, education and mortality in developing countries adopted unanimously by the UN in 2000. However, the rates of progress required by many of the goals are at the edges of or beyond historical precedent. At the same time, there appear to be limits to the degree to which aid can contribute to development outcomes. Estimates of the 'cost' of reaching the MDGs are nevertheless frequently misinterpreted to mean that a certain quantity of aid-such as the oft-cited $50 billion-could cause the Goals to be met. Despite many benefits of the MDGs, there has been little discussion so far of potential costs of the specific form taken by these goals, especially the creation of unreasonable expectations about what is achievable in a short time frame and about the role of aid in the development process. Many countries making extraordinarily rapid progress on MDG indicators, due in large part to aid, will nonetheless not reach the MDGs. Unrealistic targets thus may turn successes into perceptions of failure, serving to undermine future constituencies for aid (in donors) and reform (in recipients). This would be unfortunate given the vital role of aid and reform in the development process and the need for long-term, sustained aid commitments. Though goal-setting can be useful, these particular goals might be better viewed not as practical targets but instead as valuable reminders of the stark contrast between the world we have and the world we want, and as a call to redouble our search for interventions to close the gap more rapidly.
Information and communications technologies (ICTs) are powerful tools for empowerment and income generation in developing countries. The costeffectiveness of different ICTs does vary between developed and less developed countries, however. This article reviews the potential efficacy of radio, telephony and the Internet as tools of direct poverty alleviation in the latter. While the requirements for their successful utilisation make radio and telephone far more suitable technologies for the poor, traditional ICTs can act as a sustainable intermediary for them to gain indirect access to the power of the Internet. Governments should concentrate on opening up private and community provision of broadcasting and widening access to telephone services, so that they can effectively play this intermediary role.Radio and the telephone have a long history demonstrating their utility in developing countries. The Internet has also already proved itself useful in these countries, in increasing both the incomes and quality of services received by citizens. Using Internetbased systems to make phone calls has reduced the cost of international communication; the Internet is being used to ease the export and import of goods; and countries such as India are earning billions of dollars a year exporting IT services and software (see .Because of the many uses of information and communications technologies (ICTs) in a developing country context, many donors, governments and NGOs have long supported roll-out programmes for these technologies -providing radios to schools, community groups and refugees, and supporting the expansion of rural telephone services. Some of these same groups are now experimenting with community-based multi-purpose community telecentres (MCTs) that provide public Internet access, email and other computer applications.
This paper examines what we can say about the extent and impact of corruption in infrastructure using existing evidence. There is evidence that most perceptions measures appear to be very weak proxies for the actual extent of corruption in the infrastructure sector, largely (but inaccurately) measuring petty rather than grand corruption. Survey evidence is more reliable, but limited as a tool for differentiating countries in terms of access to infrastructure finance or appropriate policy models. The paper suggests that a focus on bribe payments as the indicator of the costs of corruption in infrastructure may be misplaced.
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