Funmi Ogundare

Former United Kingdom Prime Minister, Mr. Gordon Brown, has expressed regret that it might be impossible to achieve the Millennium, Development Goals (MDGs) on education. He, however, said it was possible to cut infant mortality by half.

Brown, who made this known, while speaking at the closing plenary session, Monday, at the World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE), in Doha, Qatar, said the world was too far away from achieving that.

According to him, "We know tragically it's impossible, despite all the changes, to change a situation where 350,000 mothers are dying each year from maternal mortality. It will not change quickly enough even if the figures go down, to meet that Millennium Development Goal. We know we have not achieved the Millennium Development Goal on gender equality."

He emphasised the need for policy change by the governments and that everyone should be mobilised towards achieving the goals by 2015.

"We must hold national governments to their promises to provide the funding both in development aid, and of course the funding that individual developing countries' governments have promised for education in their own areas. Where countries fall behind, we should be telling them that this is not acceptable because it is not simply about them and their generation - it is about future generations," he stressed.

He emphasised need for governments to create a global fund for education, just the same way there is for health, that has made enormous advances in tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS, vaccinations, as well as polio and malaria.

The Prime Minister opined that this will allow people in the private sector and the public sector, philanthropists and charitable organisations, private companies to affiliate and make possible a focus for momentum to 2015.

Brown enjoined all technology companies such as Microsoft, Apples, Facebooks, and Googles, to be involved in this project so that information, knowledge and educational materials, can get to the poor countries, saying: "We need to make sure that modern technologies get to the poorest countries to access information."
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