Fact Sheet

MCC and the Millennium Development Goals

In September of 2000, the United States committed to the United 

Nations Millennium Declaration, which contains time-bound goals for 

reducing poverty and hunger, strengthening access to education, and improving health, including combating major diseases. These Millennium 

Development Goals (MDGs) are benchmarks to measure progress on 

development. The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) plays a 

critical role in the U.S. Government’s approach to assisting countries in 

their efforts to achieve the MDGs and improve the lives of their people. 

MCC’s Role

MCC recognizes that MDGs are useful and important targets for 

many partner countries as part of their overall strategy to achieve their 

own development priorities. MCC supports partner countries in these 

efforts by:

 Fostering economic growth. MCC’s core mandate is to reduce 

poverty in the world’s poorest countries through sustainable 

economic growth. To halve the proportion of people with income 

under $1 per day by 2015, economic growth is essential. Since its 

inception in 2004, MCC has committed over $5.5 billion to assist 

this effort.

 Rewarding progress toward the MDGs. MCC works with countries that perform relatively well in terms 

of good governance, economic freedom and investing in people. In doing so, MCC selection criteria give 

countries an incentive to address MDGs. For example, MCC indicators encourage countries to improve 

girls’ primary school completion rates, immunization rates, incidence of child mortality, access to water and 

sanitation, and natural resource management. 

 Investing in country priorities. Partner country governments propose, in consultation with their citizens, 

their own priority uses for MCC funding and often decide to use MCC assistance to directly address 

April 29, 2008 | www.mcc.gov

“We will spare no effort to 

free our fellow men, 

women and children 

from the abject and 

dehumanizing conditions 

of extreme poverty...We 

resolve therefore to create an 

environment—

at the national and 

global levels alike—

which is conducive to 

development and to the 

elimination of poverty.” 

—Millennium Declaration, 

September 25, 2000
MCC and the Millennium Development Goals , April 29, 2008 2

Millennium Development Goals. At the request of eligible countries, MCC is investing in water and sanitation, primary education, immunization, health care infrastructure, and land titling, which gives farmers an 

incentive to improve rather than abandon currently cultivated land for new slash-and-burn fields. MCC investment in infrastructure and income generating activities also has important, indirect effects on achieving 

the MDGs. Roads, for example, not only enable crops to get to markets but provide better access to schools 

and health facilities. 

Examples of MCC Investments Related to MDGs

“To halve, by 2015, the proportion of the world’s people whose income is less than one dollar a day and the proportion 

of people who suffer from hunger” 

In Ghana, MCC assistance is helping farmers improve productivity of staple and commercial crops 

through training, improved irrigation, land tenure, access to credit, transportation, cold storage, an 

community services. By the end of the five-year program, the compact is expected to help directly alleviate the 

poverty of over 230,000 Ghanaians, raising average daily crop income per person by 64% to over $1 per day.

“By the same date, to halve the proportion of people who are unable to reach or to afford safe drinking water”.

In Mozambique, MCC assistance is providing access to safe, reliable water and sanitation services to 

increase productivity and reduce water-borne diseases to benefit some 1.9 million people by 2015. The 

project will supply water and sanitation services to six cities and water supply to two mid-sized towns and 600 

rural water points in the four most northern and poorest provinces of Mozambique.

“To ensure that, by the same date, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of 

primary schooling and that girls and boys will have equal access to all levels of education”.

Burkina Faso used $13 million in MCC Threshold assistance to improve its performance on MCC’s “Girls’ 

Primary Education Completion Rates” indicator resulting in 323 teachers holding classes for 18, 629 students in 132 new “girl-friendly” schools.

“By the same date, to have reduced maternal mortality by three quarters, and under-five child mortality by two 

thirds, of their current rates”.

In Lesotho, MCC is providing $122 million to rehabilitate health clinics, build diagnostic facilities and 

train nurses in order to improve service quality and availability for health center clients, including the 90 

percent of pregnant women who seek prenatal care; the more than 90 percent of infants and young children immunized against childhood infectious diseases; the 9,000 TB patients treated at the health centers each year; and 

the 34,000 persons expected to have anti-retroviral therapy (ART services during the life of the Compact. 
MCC and the Millennium Development Goals , April 29, 2008 3

“To have, by then, halted, and begun to reverse, the spread of HIV/AIDS, the scourge of malaria, and other major 

diseases that afflict humanity”.

In Indonesia, MCC is helping fund the government’s program to immunize at least 80 percent of 

children under the age of one for diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis and 90 percent of children for measles 

in all 222 districts and 90 percent of villages. 

In Cape Verde (and similarly in other countries with large infrastructure projects), MCC assistance 

helped local officials develop an HIV/AIDs awareness campaign for contractors. The program gives construction workers and local community members access to information, free, voluntary HIV/AIDs testing, 

and follow-up counseling.