As the count down to 2030, the deadline of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agreed by the world in 2015 picks up pace, developing countries and development partners are exercised on how to ensure these aspirations of the SDGs are met.

In 2015, the world meeting in Addis Ababa also agreed the Addis Ababa Action Agenda (AAAA), a framework on how to finance the SDGs, considering that one of the key constraints to not meeting the predecessor, Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), was scarcity of financial resources.

With just a dozen years left to this deadline, the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), has dedicated the 2019 edition of its flagship publication, the Economic Report on Africa (ERA), to providing guidance on how to leverage private sector finance to supplement the traditional public sector resources to fund sustainable development in Africa.

In this vein, the ECA is organizing a meeting of selected experts to brainstorm together with ECA staff on the nature and scope of such guidance to policy makers on the continent. The experts include former officials of central banks and ministries of finance from Africa, academics from Africa and around the world as well as serving government officials, African regional economic commissions and the private sector. The meeting is being organized under the theme of Financing Sustainable Development: The role of the Private Sector, and will take place in the UN Conference Centre in Addis Ababa on 19 March 2018 from 09.00hrs through 17.00hrs