Achieving the MDGs in Kenya with some aid and reallocation of public expenditures

Kenya has ascribed to the Millennium Declaration and is already in the process of mobilising resources and instituting measures to achieve Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). A MDGs status report on Kenya indicates that progress has been made towards achieving the goal of universal primary education. However, the Government will need to scale-up its efforts beyond the current momentum, if the other goals are to be realised by 2015. A preliminary conclusion is that the resource requirements are not extremely large to reach the MDGs in Kenya. If the resources are effectively used and targeted to MDG sectors they could have a substantial impact on whether Kenya would reach the MDGs or not. Some targets seem to be easier to reach than others. The target of 100 percent completion in primary school can be achieved with some additional resources targeted to the primary sector. However, a substantial increase of resources is needed at secondary and tertiary level of education to reach other goals set by the Kenyan government. Even if higher investment in all MDGsectors is needed the water sector seems to be requiring a substantial increase compared to what have been invested in the past. With regard to poverty our results show that annual average real GDP growth rate of around 8 percent would be enough to meet the poverty target of reducing the number of poor by half.