By Asmau Ahmad
The Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), has reaffirmed commitment toward supporting its member States in strengthening Africa’s agency to realise the Africa we want.
The ECA’s Acting Executive Secretary Antonio Pedro in a statement said the commission would also work collaboratively with all stakeholders to ensure Africa’s progress.
Pedro spoke at the 2023 High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with the theme, “Building Momentum Towards the 2023 SDG Summit: Transformation for accelerating implementation of the SDGs.”
“It is no secret that we are currently off-track from delivering on the promises of the 2030 Agenda, especially on the African continent.
“Nevertheless, rescuing the SDGs for Africa is possible. We will need to take decisive action to capitalise on the opportunities before us towards achieving our collective goals.”
The executive secreta said for Africa to achieve desired progress five drivers must be leveraged on.
He said fast-tracking the implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area agreement (AfCTA) will serve as a catalyst to enhanced productive capacities, achieve sustainable industrialisation and economic diversification.
According to him, the AfCTA is a key factor to breaking Africa’s excessive dependence on the export of raw materials and reducing its vulnerabilities to external shocks.
“Secondly, it is by accelerating agriculture and food systems transformation with the Common African Agro-Parks Programme (CAAPs) being a key entry point.
“Thirdly, strengthening Africa’s mineral security to meet people’s basic needs and accelerate the structural transformation of local economies by moving beyond resource extractivism to value addition.
“Fourth, making the continent’s natural capital an engine for growth and sustainable development.
“By developing a robust Carbon Credit Market to potentially generate 82 billion dollars a year if we succeed to sell a ton of CO2 at 120 dollars.
According to Pedro, fostering climate action and sustainable energy transitions by harnessing Africa’s huge solar, hydrogen, geothermal, hydropower and wind energy potential to promote the green and blue economy is also key.
He said human capital development, digital transformation, science, technology and innovation, are the foundations for Africa’s sustainable development beyond GDP metrics.
“To achieve transformational change, we must move our focus away from pilots and projects, towards integrated programmes with greater scale, ambition and depth.
“We must also heed the call for an ambitious reform of the global financial architecture to make it fit for purpose.
“And for an SDG stimulus of 500 billion dollars for increased liquidity to accelerate progress towards the SDGs,” he said.
“While MDBs are already contributing significantly to de-risking investments on the continent, the need remains to improve multilateral debt restructuring frameworks and unlock climate financing,” he said.
Pedro said central to the domestic reform agenda was the need for resource mobilisation through expanding the tax net, deepening capital markets and curbing illicit financial flows.
He then said creating favourable conditions for domestic investment and foreign direct investments was critical for engaging private sector and potentiating the emergence of competitive small and medium-scale enterprises.
“Effective implementation of smart local content policies can deliver on this,’’ the ECA boss said.
