Ten years from the end of the UN program on sustainable development, the Continent is accelerating the
pace despite great disparities and significant funding concerns.
Integration, prosperity, stability. Three key notions that sum up the composite portrait of Africa in 2030,
in accordance with the common position of the 54 States of the Continent adopted during the adoption in 2015 of the
UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Today, four years later and ten years from
the deadline, institutions and decision-makers conjugate only one verb: to accelerate. “If Africa does not realize
the SDGs, the world will not achieve the SDGs”, confided last September the Secretary General of the
United Nations, António Guterres, to the President of the African Development Bank (AfDB), Akinwumi
Adesina. For the latter, “time is running out”. “I am fully convinced that with a change of
pace, driven by a heightened sense of urgency and global collective responsibility,
Africa can achieve the Sustainable Development Goals", positive the boss of the AfDB, during a
high-level meeting between the two institutions. The structural economic transformation of the Continent
is the first pillar defined by Africa in its race towards the SDGs, closely aligned with the Agenda 2063 of
the African Union (AU). This transformation process includes the crucial components of industrialization,
modernization of agriculture and development of the tertiary sector. All this in order to achieve a
rapid, diversified, stable, resilient, sustainable and inclusive economic growth, established at 3.2% in 2018,
compared to 3.4% in 2017, according to data from the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa
(CEA), which forecasts an increase of 3.4% in 2019 and 3.7% in 2020. Robust and inclusive growth
would allow the Continent to get out of the nets of dependence on international commodity markets
raw. Experts believe that if this economic transformation takes place properly,
the impact on the other pillars of sustainable development in Africa, including education or health, would be
automatically” positive. Where is Africa today? Overall, the main bodies
multilateral and pan-African organizations agree on the progress of the Continent. In detail, however,
more or less important disparities are observed. Some African economies are now showing
the fastest and highest growing in the world. And according to the OECD, 26 countries have already adopted
of a national industrialization strategy. This has attracted the major car manufacturers in particular
world markets, such as Peugeot or Volkswagen, raising the hope of one day seeing an automobile industry in Africa
strong and wealth-creating. Stagnation or moderate improvement The other major contributor to
metamorphosis of the African economic sphere is none other than entrepreneurship. With 22% of the
business-creating working-age population, the Continent has the highest rate of entrepreneurship in
world, according to the OECD. In addition, the report of the SDG Center for Africa (SDGCAfrica) published in
June 2019 places 35 countries at 50% or more on track to achieve the SDGs by 2030. Leading the way is Mauritius (66%),
Tunisia (66%), Algeria (65%), Morocco (64%) and Cape Verde (64%). On the other hand, the DRC (41%), the
Somalia (40%), Chad (38%), the Central African Republic (36%) and South Sudan (29%) come in at the bottom of the
picture. With regard to growth in particular, the majority of African countries have stagnated or experienced a
moderate improvement. In terms of industry, innovation and infrastructure, only Algeria has maintained
on track towards achieving development goals, while 20 countries show a
moderate improvement and 31 countries stagnate. That said, the experts project that the implementation of the
Continental Free Trade Area (Zleca) boosts the economic transformation of the Continent, because the fall
economic and border barriers in a context of the rise of the middle class
expand markets, increasing opportunities for investors and businesses. What
promote the economic diversification so much sought after by the majority of African economies that
are still flourishing in global commodity markets. Already, a country
as Côte d'Ivoire appears to be the country with the greatest potential for future trade growth in
world, according to Standard Chartered's Trade20 Index. The region is still a long way off To achieve the
sustainable development goals, particularly in terms of economic transformation, the 54 countries of Africa have an enormous need for financing. The OECD estimates the necessary investments at 30% to
35% of the Continent's GDP. Guido Schmidt-Traub, Executive Director of Sustainable Development Solutions
Network (UNSDSN), was one of the first to work on Africa's Financing Need in 2015. It has
estimated at between 614 and 638 billion dollars the additional amount necessary each year, so that
Africa is achieving the 2030 Agenda. It is difficult to obtain an estimate of the sums mobilized to date by
the whole Continent. But according to this expert, the region is still far from the mark. “We estimate in
our last report that over the next ten years, on average, African countries are expected to recover
mobilization of internal resources by the equivalent of 5% of their GDP, explains Guido Schmidt-Traub. This is
a considerable amount and today African countries, on average, have not reached this amount. There are
further efforts to be made. To date, Africa is not on track to mobilize
quickly enough financial resources needed to finance the SDGs, but we believe
however it is possible”. Why not a global fund? And if a mechanism like the Global Fund
fight against AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis was put in place, in particular for the areas
much more social ones such as education, health, and even climate change? That's what
recommends Guido Schmidt-Traub. At the Lyon conference in early October, this fund achieved its goal
financing by mobilizing more than $14 billion over three years. “For me, this is the key example of a fund
multilateral investment fund, organized in an efficient and sound manner to enable very
quickly and at the right scale in national health systems, says Schmidt-Traub. The results
obtained by this fund are truly remarkable. Equivalent structures are needed to finance the
priorities of the SDGs in Africa”. Until such mobilization is possible, the Commission
Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), emphasizes in its 2019 report the need
sound fiscal policy through better mobilization of public revenue. After the fall
public revenue of African countries to 18.6% of GDP in 2016 due to the crisis, the manna of the States
improved to 21.4% of GDP in 2018, which is still far from the 31.4% of 2008, however, according to
ECA data. The effort is all the more necessary since, despite this growth, Africa has been over the period
2000-2018, the region of the world with the lowest public revenue/GDP ratio (24.5%), when that of
Europe, for example, was 34.8%. Reform tax policies “Most of the economies of
emerging markets and low-income developing countries have the opportunity to increase revenues
public”, considers the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in its report Fiscal policy and
development: human, social and physical investment for the SDGs, published in January 2019 and in
which the Bretton Woods institution advocates tax policy reform. On this point, ECA
advocates rapid digitization, reduction of collection costs, extension of taxation to certain
hard-to-tax sectors, such as agribusiness, real estate and services, but also the creation of a
enabling environment for private sector development, especially SMEs. Call out
private investment For the time being, multilateral institutions criticize governments for not
consider enough such avenues to achieve the SDGs, instead of going into debt. Because, wanting at all costs
not to appear in the class of bad students in 2030, certain States resort excessively to debt,
provoking their over-indebtedness, without guarantees on their ability to repay. In addition to the mechanisms
put in place by financing institutions such as the World Bank, the African Development Bank
development, the European Union or the French Development Agency, the public-private partnership
(PPP) is increasingly preferred. “There is a need for the public and private sectors to understand the
benefits of PPPs. They must be precisely defined and well used. [...] Neither the private sector nor the sector
cannot fund development alone,” said Vera Songwe, Executive Secretary of ECA,
at the International PPP Forum in Geneva last May. Thus, whether it is the unavoidable question
infrastructure, agricultural development or more recently health, institutions and governments
are increasingly campaigning for greater involvement of private financing, which involves
systematically improving the business environment. If we refer to the Doing Business
2019, Africa has seen extremely significant progress in recent years, with Rwanda
introduced into the world's top 20. In the short list of the 20 reformers of Doing Business 2020 published at the beginning
October, five African countries stand out: Djibouti, Kenya, Nigeria, Togo and Zimbabwe. But of
Generally speaking, many African countries are still groping in this area. In addition to advances
administrative which can sometimes be particularly slow, one of the handicaps to business success
in many African countries remains corruption. And this immediately makes the notion of governance,
which has recently emerged as an essential subject for achieving the SDGs in Africa. One
prime indicator for foreign investors.