Those involved in the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) campaign routinely state Africa will miss all the MDGs. This paper argues that a series of arbitrary choices made in defining success or failure as achieving numerical targets for the Millennium Development Goals made attainment of the MDGs...

This paper does not address the issue of aid effectiveness - that is, the extent to which aid dollars actually achieve their goals - but instead focuses on best practices in the way in which official aid is given, an important component of wider debate. First, we discuss best practice for an...