BBC Network Africa on the BBC World Service

With an important stock-taking conference coming up in a few weeks time - minds are being focused on just how far the world has come in achieving the millennium development goals. These were a set of targets adopted in the year two thousand to provide a framework for tackling extreme poverty and they're meant to be attained by twenty fifteen. There was broad agreement that this was a good thing. But now a group here in London is raising doubts about the value of this approach. International Alert has just released a report in which it claims the MDG guidelines are leading development agencies down the wrong path. Audrey Brown asked Phil Vernon, who is the principal author of the report - what exactly they meant.