The SDGs provide time-bound targets in key sectors – including health, education, employment, energy, infrastructure, and the environment – for all nations to achieve. Nowhere in the world is the need to achieve these targets larger than in Africa.
The 2020 Foresight Africa: Top Priorities for the Continent 2020 – 2030 Research Study Report that examined Africa’s progress on the SDGs as well as adjustments to strategies needed to overcome the remaining obstacles concluded that “while progress in some areas and countries has been encouraging, overall, the region will need to redouble its efforts if it is to achieve the SDGs by 2030”.
According to the report, “to be successful, there is need for effective and coordinated partnerships to domesticate the SDGs – that is, to fully transpose the SDG ecosystem into national and regional planning and implementation mechanisms – as well as African Union’s Agenda 2063, and to bridge the large financing and data gaps”.
The research report further notes that progress so far on the implementation of the SDGs have been uneven across countries, goals, and targets. According to the Africa SDG Index and Dashboard 2019, the best-ranked country, Mauritius, had an aggregate score of 66.19 – implying that the country is, on average, 66 percent of the way to the best possible outcome across the 17 SDGs.
Other top performers include Botswana, Ghana, and Rwanda. However, 18 countries (of 46 in total) in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are, on average, less than 50 percent on the way towards meeting the possible outcome on all SDGs.
Overall, at the indicator level, “these countries are off track on most of the SDGs, reiterating the urgency for countries and global partners to jointly accelerate reforms and implementation”.
Gains in health and education show promise but with an intensified accelerated response, the other African regions could feasibly meet this target. Large-scale progress on both health and education remain a concern, given that most Africa countries have not carried out demographic health and national surveys over the SDG period.
On education it is reckoned that more than half of the countries in Africa have a primary school enrolment rate of over 90 percent and are likely to meet the target by 2030 “if current efforts are sustained”. However, the net enrolment for lower secondary education has fallen slightly from 28.9 in 2015 to 28.3 in 2017.
The report further notes that to house and serve Africa’s young and fast-growing population – expected to increase from 1.3 billion today to over 2.5 billion by 2030 – “governments must address sorely needed infrastructure and service requirements quickly”.
There have been improvements though in recent years: for example, access to clean drinking water in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has increased from 59 percent of the population in 2015 to 61 percent in 2017. Access to electricity increased from 39.4 percent to 44.6 percent over the same period.
At the same time, “African urban dwellers will need 565 million additional housing units between 2015 and 1030 just to keep up with rapid population growth and urbanization. This is about 40 million new houses per annum over that time”.
As of 2015, SSA had the highest concentration of the world’s poor, with 41.3 percent of people living under the poverty line. An estimated 600 million people do not have access to electricity, and millions die every year from preventable diseases. Relentless population growth and climate change also present two major threats to continued economic progress.
It is reported that 31 African countries need food aid, and more than 30 percent of the 830 million people worldwide suffering from inadequate food supply are in Africa.
“Given the complexities caused by rapid population growth and climate change, African nations must attempt to achieve the SDGs with urgency, as many of the challenges will become harder to manage if left unattended”, laments the report.
Even with Africa’s enthusiasm, “without a robust global and localized governance structure the SDG agenda will falter”, states the report adding that one major reason for “Africa’s progress is that the SDGs are in direct alignment with the AU’s Agenda 2063” – the continent’s long-term social and economic transformational blueprint for a prosperous continent”.
In fact, the two ambitious agendas align on over 85 percent of their goals, and African countries have shown enormous enthusiasm and endeavours in implementing the SDGs, “with 90 percent of countries mainstreaming the SDGs into their national development plans”.
The report also observes that the African continent is disadvantaged with a low starting point. Fragility – which manifests in many forms such as weak institutions and economic, political, and social insecurity – remains prevalent in parts of the region, with 80 percent of the world’s fragile states found in Africa.
Despite being one of the of the fastest growing regions in recent decades, “40 percent of African countries are still classified as “low income”, with a GNI per capita of below US$1.025 per year”.
Financing continues to be a constraint as well. The financing gap for SDGs is large for low-income countries, estimated to be, on average, in excess of 14 percent of GDP. Alone, SSA’s annual additional spending requirements are estimated at 24 percent of the continent’s GDP, approximately $420 billion.
“This financing gap is a sizable challenge for many Africa countries given that, as of 2018, over 20 of the 54 African countries are either in or at a high risk of debt distress. Compounding this challenge, official development assistance, though rising overall, is declining in per capita terms, and foreign direct investment has been dwindling in recent years”, states the report.
Furthermore, while more than a third of the required financing for the SDGs was expected to come from the private sector, “the actual contributors from the private sector so far are significantly smaller, at only four percent to eight percent”, laments the report.
The report notes further that going forward, “leaders at all levels must tackle the SDGs head-on with a comprehensive and interconnected approach to effectively optimize resources”.
Since such an approach seeks high-level horizontal and vertical coordination, it requires persistent and logically framed action plans for ensuring synergies. The domestication process must thus go beyond just mainstreaming the SDGs into national development plans but must rather “strive to contextualize both the target and its indicators to local socioeconomic realities”.
“The strategies must be changed from the conventional present-to future to future-to-present planning, cascading from 2030 backward” advises the report adding that “firmly determined to take its future into its own hands, Africa is growing out of adopting agendas to, instead, setting the agenda. Agenda 2063 is one mechanism for doing so”.
So is the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCTA), which integrates a market of 1.2 billion people with a GDP of over $3.4 trillion, creating new opportunities for Africa and its business partners.
In addition, many African countries are embarking on an ambitious development plans that are driving the adoption of technologies and new sources of energy. Countries are also showing a greater appetite for information technology and knowledge.
“While Africa should remain committed to working with its development partners over the next decade and beyond, achieving the SDGs should primarily be its own responsibility”, advises the report adding that “the SDGs should not be treated as a standalone project from New York. They should be fully owned by countries and integrated in national plans and strategies, domesticated and adapted to the national context”.
In the case of Rwanda, “this approach helped achieve many Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015, and it underlies our strategy for the SDGs. Indeed, the SDGs have been integrated into the National Strategy for Transformation 2017 – 2024 and Vision 2050 in order to ease planning prioritization, resource allocation, and monitoring of progress”.
Countries need to strengthen their statistical capacity to measure SDGs indicators. They also need to build a robust monitoring system that continuously evaluates and monitors progress so that policymakers are informed in real time about any changes that require intervention.
