Dakar — Africa needs to strengthen home grown solutions to its problems and develop innovative financing mechanisms for the huge investments required to achieve the sustainable development goals, says Mr. Mohammed Ibn Chambas, the United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary General for West Africa and the Sahel (UNOWAS).
Speaking at the Fourth Session of the Africa Regional Forum on Sustainable Development in Dakar, Senegal, Mr. Chambas said for example, if Africa is to expand energy access, which is covered by SDG 7, by 2030, investments of approximately US$ 34.2 billion per year are needed.
"It is therefore opportune that the regional forum is being held against the backdrop of African countries coming together in March 2018 to launch the African Continental Free Trade Area," he said.
Mr. Chambas said the AfCFTA is set to give momentum to regional integration and catalyse joint and concerted efforts to tackle a wide range of issues that are critical to placing the people of Africa on a path to sustainability and resilience.
The AfCFTA, among other things, will help enhance the development of regional infrastructure, including boosting energy supply, to facilitate trade and value addition respectively.
So far 44 of the 55 African Union Heads of State and Government have signed the AfCFTA agreement, which, once in force, will be the largest trade zone in the world. It will increase intra-African trade by 52 per cent by the year 2022.
Mr. Chambas said Africa remained home to the highest number of people living in poverty, a major undercurrent of vulnerability, as it undermines the capability of a large proportion of the people to cope with shocks as well as natural and human induced hazards.
Realizing the SDGs and Africa's Agenda 2063 offers African countries the opportunity to reconfigure development plans which offer a central seat to inclusive structural transformation, the UNOWAS Head said.
"We are now in the third year of implementation of the SDGs. We are in the fourth year in the case of the First 10-Year Implementation Plan of Agenda 2063. Over this time, most of our countries have revised and aligned their development frameworks to implement the agreed goals. Notwithstanding the progress made, there are concerns that the current pace is not fast enough. Fears that some goals will not be realized within the set timeframe are mounting," he said.
"This Forum therefore is indeed a unique and powerful platform for us to reflect on our achievements and explore how to extend the frontiers of success to achieve the SDGs. It is also a mechanism for us to hold each other accountable and sustain commitment to achieve the goals within the set timeframe."
Countries, Mr. Chambas said, need to keep under regular review their policies and implementation arrangements to match the ambition and ideals of both the 2030 Agenda and Agenda 2063.
Undertaken effectively, voluntary national reviews (VNRs) are a power tool to inform and reshape policies and interventions to implement the two Agendas, he said, adding more countries should undertake similar reviews to expand their knowledge base and to accelerate their SDG implementation process.
"We must also seize the unique opportunities that our regional forum offers to identify and articulate policy options and garner support to tackle shared and cross-border issues, challenges and barriers. Many of these place a heavy toll on the pace of implementation. Shared and transboundary challenges call for stronger and coherent sub-regional and regional collaboration and interventions," said Mr. Chambas.
The forum ends Thursday.
