Getting the SDGs back on track in Africa

Editor’s note:

This essay opens Chapter 3 of Foresight Africa 2025-2030, which assesses Africa’s progress on the Sustainable Development Goals over the past decade and provides a nuanced analysis of where the region stands in order to explore viable strategies for accelerating progress. 

Halfway through the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) timeline, only 17% of the targets are on track globally and almost 35% are stagnating or regressing.¹ The picture across Africa follows a similar trend. ² Reversing this troubling trajectory in Africa will require a bold, new strategic approach, adequate and affordable financing, and renewed political commitment. The path to progress is clear, but it demands a radical shift: Instead of chasing individual SDGs in isolation, African countries and their partners must harness the powerful, mutually reinforcing synergies among the goals. Emphasizing key enablers like technology and energy over individual indicators can boost economic output, spur innovation, encourage value-addition in economic activity, protect the planet, create jobs, and enhance human capital. An allied imperative required to get the SDGs back on track in Africa is reforming the way Africa’s development is financed. Coordinated global efforts to improve tax efficiency along with an increased use of creative mechanisms to finance sustainable development will unlock Africa’s immense potential.

Instead of chasing individual SDGs in isolation, African countries and their partners must harness the powerful, mutually reinforcing synergies among the goals.

The United Nations’ (UN) Pact for the Future articulates a new multilateral framework that can help African countries move toward achieving the SDGs faster and outlines clear pathways toward ending poverty, reforming trade, addressing critical financing gaps, and protecting the planet.³ Of particular note is the annexed Declaration on Future Generations, which calls for concerted action to secure the well-being of generations to come.⁴ Africa’s path to achieving the SDGs is within reach—but only if the commitments in the Pact are more than just promises on paper. Immediate implementation is the only way forward. This is why U.N. agencies like the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) are working across the continent to foster innovation, strengthen capacity, and invest in Africa’s future.⁵

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, African countries were experiencing slow but steady progress. On average, Africa’s GDP grew by 3.3% annually between 2010 and 2019,⁶ while net capital inflows rose from $70 billion in 2007 to $113 billion in 2017, providing some optimism that more countries would be in a better position to invest in key sectors and capabilities.⁷ However, the pandemic disrupted Africa’s SDG aspirations. Development gains were eroded, as seen in the historic drop in the Human Development Index in 2020/21.⁸ In addition, roughly 23 million Africans were pushed back into poverty in 2020,⁹ millions of children could not attend school,¹⁰ inequalities deepened, and millions suffered disruptions to health services.¹¹ Unfortunately, the pandemic and subsequent geopolitical and supply chain shocks further stymied progress in African countries.¹²

The IMF’s October 2024 World Economic Outlook painted a gloomy picture, noting that the anemic near-term global GDP growth is insufficient to eradicate poverty, create adequate jobs, or generate enough fiscal revenue to service debt.¹³ This sobering assessment highlights the dual growth conundrum facing African countries. African economies must grow much faster than the medium-term GDP estimates, and the type of growth matters. High growth rates alone will not accelerate attainment of the SDGs in Africa if they do not create jobs or generate wealth. Addressing these issues requires concerted and coordinated actions by African countries and their development partners on four fronts.

Enhanced economic governance and efforts to eliminate corruption are crucial if the continent is to make meaningful and sustained progress with the SDGs.

First, African countries must transition from focusing on individual SDG targets to adopting an “SDG ecosystem approach,” which entails prioritizing core activities that improve multiple SDGs. For instance, promoting smart agriculture reduces poverty, creates jobs, enhances human capital, reduces income inequality, and mitigates hunger in a way that protects the planet. This approach helps consolidate resources and action by both public and private development actors. UNDP’s Regional Stabilization Facility, which operates on this principle, has reached 1.7 million people (including 1 million women) across six countries. It has helped resettle more than 500,000 internally displaced persons by strengthening regional institutional capacities, thereby putting many communities back on track to attain multiple SDGs.¹⁴

Second, Africa and its development partners must be better prepared for the post-official development assistance (ODA) era of development financing. Figure 6 illustrates the reduction in ODA as a proportion of spending by African governments on health and education. African countries must also prioritize efficiency enhancements in domestic development spending, which far exceeds aid dollars. Additionally, the financing of strategic investments (particularly infrastructure, energy, and technology) requires increased ingenuity and ambition. Africa’s regional financial institutions can use their leverage ratios and market positions to expand the pool of financial resources available to African countries while greatly reducing their lending costs. A recent report by Fitch Ratings suggests that multilateral development banks could increase their lending by an additional $480 billion without compromising their credit ratings.¹⁵ This is a practical way to bridge Africa’s $4 trillion SDG financing gap.¹⁶ Regional development banks in Africa should be enabled and empowered to use financial innovation in this regard.

Third, African institutions must put a premium on regional value chains. African countries account for less than 3% of the global value chains in which they are involved.¹⁷ Take the lithium-ion battery value chain for example. If African countries continue exporting unrefined cobalt, lithium, and nickel, they will command an $11 billion market. Refining increases the value fourfold, while the component production can increase the value to almost $400 billion.¹⁸ Reengineering Africa’s value chains can increase income, spur much-needed economic diversification, create jobs, and retain value on the continent. Such reengineering will be much easier (and quicker) regionally. The World Bank estimates that regional integration via the African Continental Free Trade Area agreement could lift 50 million people out of extreme poverty by 2035 and expand incomes across the continent by $571 billion.¹⁹

Fourth, the global community should do more to ensure that African resources finance Africa’s development. Improving public financial management and closing tax/contractual loopholes could generate almost twice the amount of ODA that African countries currently receive. The Tax Inspectors Without Borders initiative has saved $1.8 billion in Africa since inception by providing technical assistance on natural resource contracting and closing tax loopholes.²⁰ The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development estimates that illicit financial flows cost African countries on average $88.6 billion annually.²¹ Particular attention should also be paid to potential revenue streams like carbon markets and rare earth metals. Furthermore, enhanced economic governance and efforts to eliminate corruption are crucial if the continent is to make meaningful and sustained progress with the SDGs.

Getting the SDGs back on track in Africa is not just a bureaucratic objective—it is a matter of dignity, survival, and hope for over a billion people.

There are some green shoots of optimism indicating that SDG progress is not only attainable, but within reach. By 2035, more young Africans will enter the job market annually than in the rest of the world combined, with small-to-medium enterprises accounting for 80% of jobs.²² Africa’s youthful entrepreneurs are increasingly tech-savvy, with 160 million Africans gaining broadband access between 2019 and 2022.²³ The 2024 Stanford AI Index reports that Kenyans are the world’s third most frequent ChatGPT users.²⁴ A study of AI use in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa suggests that technology could create a $136 billion boost to economic benefits in these countries by 2030.²⁵ Engaging tech-savvy youth through employment across sectors could help Africa turn the corner in its efforts to attain the SDGs.

A viable “last mile” push is warranted. While most countries will be unable to meet all of the SDGs by 2030, we can still attain the aspirational goal of putting African countries on a fast track to achieving shared global development goals and regional aspirations like the African Union’s Agenda 2063. In the face of unprecedented challenges, getting the SDGs back on track in Africa is not just a bureaucratic objective—it is a matter of dignity, survival, and hope for over a billion people. Africa’s young and dynamic population, its rich natural endowment, and its untapped potential for innovation represent a powerful force for change, but only if this potential is fully harnessed.

Every step toward the SDGs is a step toward a future where children thrive, families build sustainable livelihoods, and nations stand resilient and self-reliant. This vision goes beyond numbers on a chart—it is about empowering a generation that refuses to inherit a world plagued by poverty, inequality, and environmental ruin. The good news is that Africa’s abundant natural resource endowment, positive regional synergies, and vibrant youthful population offer a promising path forward. African communities and countries are already taking steps to seize these opportunities and reshape the continent’s development trajectory.

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