This is Africa features Ben Leo's work on MDG country progress.
From the article:
Envisioned as global targets, the MDGs are reported by region, with little granular detail. While this may be appropriate, given the Goals’ genesis, it does little to help policymakers recognise which countries are genuinely delivering on development targets, says Ben Leo, research fellow at CGD and co-author of the report ,“Who are the MDG trailblazers”.
“There’s a big problem with the regional aggregates, in that you can have dramatic intra-regional differences that can mask either very strong performers or poor performers,” he says. “China is recognised – appropriately – as a star performer and surging ahead on the MDGs…. On the other hand a country like Papua New Guinea, which has a smaller population and actually is not achieving tremendous progress across a number of the core Millennium Development Goals, it gets completely masked by China. Asia, as a region, looks very good because of China”
Africa, likewise, is pulled down because of large underperformers, such as Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sudan. Mr Leo’s index takes a more granular look at individual low income countries and charts their development trajectory.