After visiting Ghana on a recent tour to examine poverty reduction strategies and progress on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and “one of the world’s most prominent development economists, says Ghana is proving to be one of the strongest performers on the [MDGs] in Africa and unlike some of its African counterparts is likely to fulfill them by the 2015 deadline,” the Christian Science Monitor reports. Ghana “has been investing for a long time in health and education, gender and equality, and it has made a lot of progress. But there are parts of Ghana that are extremely poor and really need a lot of accelerated investments,” Sachs told the Christian Science Monitor during an interview in Accra, according to the news service.  

“Sachs says that Ghana’s biggest challenge is ensuring that development is spread evenly across all regions, particularly the arid northern part of the country, which remains desperately poor,” the news service notes. The news service discusses the country’s economy, the financial livelihoods of Ghanaians and accusations of government overspending (MacDougall, 1/11).