Leaders at ALF 2025 call for funding alternatives to support ambitious SDGs

KAMPALA, UGANDA: September 2015, all 193 Member States of the United Nations adopted a plan for achieving a better future for all — laying out a path over the next 15 years to end extreme poverty, fight inequality and injustice, and protect our planet.

At the heart of “Agenda 2030” are the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) also known as the Global Goals, which are a set of 17 universal goals adopted by the United Nations in 2015, aiming to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all by 2030, addressing global challenges like poverty, inequality, and climate change.

By the time of the SDGs approval in 2015, the President of the United Nations General Assembly’s 69th session was Uganda’s former foreign Affairs minister of Uganda Sam Kutesa.

While attending the recent Africa Leadership Forum convened by the Uongozi Institute, he said that the Global Goals were as a result of a process which was more inclusive.

Prior to their approval, countries or Governments around the world involved private businesses, civil society and public participation with local communities, he noted.

African Leadership Forum: Delegates call for fresh focus in SDGs implementation

Subsequently, there was the Addis Ababa Action agenda. This Action Agenda established a strong foundation to support the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It provided a new global framework for financing sustainable development by aligning all financing flows and policies with economic, social and environmental priorities.

The Addis Ababa Action Agenda was adopted at the Third International Conference on Financing for Development and subsequently endorsed by the UN General Assembly in its resolution 69/313 of 27 July 2015.

It includes a comprehensive set of policy actions, with over 100 concrete measures that draw upon all sources of finance, technology, innovation, trade, debt and data, in order to support achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.

The Addis Ababa Action Agenda integrated created an approach that sought to mobilise resources by relying on seven action areas like domestic public resources and combating illicit financial flows, domestic and international private business and finance, international development cooperation, trade, debt sustainability, systemic issues and science, technology, innovation, capacity building.

In this plan, countries were given measures to be implemented b through national financial frameworks and policies with the objective of improving national tax administration and public financial management in order to increase public funding, enhance public policies and regulation which can attract private sector investment and activity, stimulating official development assistance (ODA), South-South cooperation and development bank lending to foster development in the least-developed countries (LDCs),promoting export-oriented growth strategies in developing countries and make trade more inclusive.

They also sought to decrease public and corporate debt and avoid risks for the global economy. They would also spread technological development evenly across countries.

Commitment to SDGs is one of the reasons that at the recently concluded 8th African Leadership Forum (ALF) in Kampala, Uganda, Mr Sam Kutesa noted that the SDGs were well developed ambitions and that nothing was wrong with them, except that there is need to rethink financing models for the same.

He noted that the SDGs were proper aspirations and that what was needed for the continent is innovating new measures to finance their implementation, like leveraging local natural resources and private sector to finance them.

Organized by the Institute of African Leadership for Sustainable Development (UONGOZI Institute), this year’s forum was run on the theme, “Realising sustainable development goals in Africa: Progress and way forward”.

SDGs, which are a universal call to action that aims to eradicate poverty, safeguard the environment, and guarantee prosperity for all, were adopted since 2015. The ongoing ALF is discussing the current status of SDG implementation in African countries whilst identifying key challenges and bottlenecks hindering progress.

According to the ALF 2025 convener and the ALF Patron and fourth President of the United Republic of Tanzania, Dr Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete, there is need to reset SDGs implementation on the right path, with urgency of action and with high political will and turning ambition into action.

He noted that despite there being challenges in the implementation, that should be changed into opportunity and reaffirm local commitment to SDGs and Africa Agenda 2030.

He also called for prioritizing of economic growth which then produces jobs and an education that is able to create world class learning outcomes and a middle class.

The ALF co-convener and former Prime Minister of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia Hailemariam Desalegn noted that Africa faces opportunities but with challenges in achieving SGDs, such as a huge funding gap and thus significant resources needed to fill the gap.

He also proposed alternatives to funding the SDGs but at the same time calling for solutions like strengthened governance and institutions, transparency, rule of law, combating corruption and curbing illicit financial flows. This, he suggested, have to come hand in hand with a resilient workforce, sustainable food security, reliable energy and strengthening of integration in trade and the broader economies across the continent through ceding but of individual countries’ sovereignty and embrace the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).

“If it gets harder to trade with other more established economies in the west, its only prudent that we strengthen intra trade, leverage technology and innovation, resource mobilise and cur on foreign aid and Overseas Development Assistance (ODA)

The Deputy Executive Secretary at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, Antonio Pedro noted that in implementing SDGs, it was important to understand that unemployment is not merely an economic concern but also a threat to peace and a test to our economic model, adding that private sector must not just invest in profit but also in purpose.

He argued that the continent needed a recalibrated SDG model, further noting that removing tariff and non-tariff barriers has the potential to increase in Africa’s intra trade by 45 per cent in the next decade.

At a time when the AI global economy is projected to reach $1.8 trillion by 2030, Africa still had only 1 percent of that.

In a keynote statement, the former FAO representative to Ethiopia, the African Union and UNECA, FAO Sub regional Coordinator for Eastern Africa Mr. Mafa Chipeta, argued for an approach that is more selective and re-focused in implementation, noting that if the continent takes on all the SDGs at one go, it may spread itself too thin.

The basis of his argument was hinged on the facts that the continent has 17 to 18 percent of global population but with just 2 percent of the World GDP and trade, scores 3 percent for most economic indices and with only less than 0.5 percent for new critical technologies.

He further cautioned that African trade ministries tend to ignore the larger domestic trade than foreign trade which leaves exploitative traders to rob smallholders and continues to heavily subsidise the world economy by selling raw, unprocessed low value materials cheaply and buys the same back at inflated prices.

He proposed that the continent needs to cut down on donor dependency by still allocating its own funds so that donors don’t replace local commitment.

Former President of the Republic of Sierra Leone, Dr. Ernest Bai Koroma, noted that while the current ‘America’ first plan had created uncertainty in the rest of the world, it was also timely for Africa to grab this opportunity so that it re-anchors itself and make new bold decisions in new development directions.

He urged prioritizing human capital development through education, health and social services delivery, agriculture development and good governance with leadership that is determined to drive all these processes.