In the year 2000, 189 world leaders pledged to achieve the Millennium Development Goals — a set of 8 benchmarks to eradicate extreme poverty, achieve universal primary education, promote gender equality and empower women, reduce child mortality, improve maternal health, combat major diseases, ensure environmental sustainability and develop a global partnership for development by the year 2015. But progress is moving too slowly to meet the deadline.

World leaders have made the least progress on their promises to women.

UN Millennium Campaign Africa Office based in Nairobi, Kenya, supports civil society and citizen engagement in the campaign for the achievement of Millennium Development Goals. The organisation works with various partners including civil society organisations among them faith based organisations, youth and women organisations, parliamentarians and local governments in 14 priority countries in the South, East and West Africa.

The Millennium Declaration was unanimously adopted at the Millennium Summit of the United Nations in 2000 by 189 heads of state andgovernments. The declaration was then summarized into concrete, achievable; time bound sets of 8 goals with clear targets and indicesof progress known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to be achieved by 2015.

Capital is a key factor of production in the sense that for poor people, it is a big constraint in pursuing their livelihoods, so we see microfinance as part of a broader livelihood approach. We think that in terms of empowering women, savings and credit programmes at the micro-level, particularly self-help based ones, are extremely important.