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Brazzaville, Congo, March 2, 2020 (CEA) – Can African countries still achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030? Growth trajectories in Africa and the impact of COVID19 are currently casting doubts on the ability of countries to meet this target unless the region achieves faster growth than before the pandemic in the coming years.
The second day of the 7th African Regional Forum for Sustainable Development (ARFSD) kicked off on Tuesday under the chairmanship of Zimbabwe’s Minister of Civil Service, Labor and Social Protection, Paul Mavima, with the opportunity for African delegates to speak update on the implementation of Agenda 2030 and 2063 in the fight against COVID19.
According to the ECA Report on Sustainable Development in Africa, the implementation of the SDGs and Agenda 2063 in Africa faced several challenges even before the onset of the COVID19 crisis:
Before the pandemic, income disparities were on the rise in the region; and while extreme poverty has almost disappeared in North Africa, more than 50% of the population of Central Africa lives below the extreme poverty line. About nine out of ten extremely poor people in the world currently live in Africa. The ECA warns that COVID19 will push an additional 5 to 29 million below the extreme poverty line. If the impact of the pandemic is not limited by 2021, an additional 59 million people could suffer the same fate, bringing the total number of extremely poor Africans to 514 million people.
Africa continues to experience disparities in universal access to energy, electricity and even clean fuels and cooking technologies.
As African countries progressed towards the emission reduction target and succeeded in increasing the proportion of key biodiversity areas by 4.5% between 2010 and 2020, the region has remained vulnerable to climate change with a capacity to limited response. In addition, Africa lost an average of 3.9 million hectares of forest per year between 2010 and 2020 due to population growth, poverty and agricultural expansion.
Faced with these difficulties, ECA experts have proposed several strategies to accelerate African recovery such as:
• Establishing and strengthening social protection systems for sustainable poverty reduction and investing in key enablers such as reproductive health, mental health, access to primary health care and education:
• Improved environment through sustainable extraction policies and the use of natural resources;
• Invest in modern and digital technologies to increase productivity and encourage innovation;
• Adopt a people-centered approach in dealing with issues related to governance, peace and security;
• In order to finance these efforts, ECA experts recommended the use of a coordinated multilateral approach for debt relief, debt restructuring and development finance as well as domestic resource mobilization.
The ECA team presented the Integrated Planning and Reporting Toolkit (IPRT), designed to help African countries facilitate the integration of the SDGs and Agenda 2063 into their national development plans and monitoring. of their implementation.
This meeting took place within the framework of the 7th African Regional Forum on Sustainable Development (ARFSD) which is currently taking place online and in person in Brazzaville (Republic of Congo) from March 1 to 4, 2021. ARFSD is being held this year under the theme: “Building better to move forward: towards a resilient and green Africa to achieve Agenda 2030 and Agenda 2063” and aims to take stock of the progress made towards the implementation of the SDGs and Agenda 2063, facilitate the exchange of information and experiences between countries and promote solutions and transformative actions that will accelerate their implementation.
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