Progress on SDGs can’t achieve 2030 targets, experts warn

• Says Africa still accounts for 54.8% of global poverty

Development experts have expressed dismay over the slow pace of progress on the Sustainable Development Goals (SGDs), noting that it is insufficient to achieve the 2030 targets.

Although they said Africa was making progress in SDG 12 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, they cautioned that the current pace of progress was insufficient to achieve the goals.

They raised the concerns through a report produced by a team of professionals convened by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), in collaboration with the African Union Commission, the United Nations Development Programme Regional Bureau for Africa (UNDP-RBA), and the African Development Bank (AfDB) ahead of the 10th Session of the Africa Regional Forum on Sustainable Development (ARFSD-10) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

According to them, progress on the SDG agendas varies across sub-regions with West and North Africa being the best performers while East Africa has relatively low performance. The report said none of the sub-regions is on track to achieve the SDGs goals with the general issue of lack of data in tracking the progress in Africa.

Deputy Executive Secretary for Programme Support at the ECA, Antonio Pedro, highlighted the lack of robust data as a major hurdle in tracking progress accurately, adding that improving data systems to effectively monitor and achieve the SDGs was essential.

Pedro said addressing wide-ranging challenges that include social, political, environmental, and economic was essential, while specific focus areas like women’s empowerment, peace-building and security need attention.

He expressed the need to take advantage of technological advances, including artificial intelligence, to target interventions and achieve the SDGs with greater efficiency.

He underscored fostering domestic resource mobilisation through evolving a better and innovative tax system, and emphasised that countries need to improve institutional governance, strengthen data collection, analysis, reporting, and devise better strategies for debt restructuring.

The report shows that poverty in Africa is dynamic, deep-rooted, and multi-faceted, warning that attention should also be paid to vulnerable people, who are at risk of falling into poverty.

Also speaking on the report, UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator, Ramiz Alakbarov, explained that Africa needed to focus on the development of resilience and the reduction of dependency on humanitarian aid, which is a counterproductive reliance that must be eliminated.

On climate financing, the progress report shows the high climate financing gap in Africa. A large chunk of these resources emanates from public sector compared to private sector climate financing.

Director of Strategic Planning & Delivery at the African Union Commission, Botho Kebabonye Bayendi, said: “The African Union (AU) is committed to a decade of accelerated progress, characterised by “moonshots”. Moonshots are ambitious targets set for the year 2033, as part of the second ten-year implementation plan of Agenda 2063.”