Africa Industrialization Day

  The world stands at a critical juncture. After decades of falling poverty and rising living standards, progress has stalled and, in some cases, reversed. The 2007-09 global financial crisis slowed momentum, with the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbating the trend. Now, rising geopolitical conflict risks entrenching this decline. Ongoing low productivity and limited economic diversification leave developing countries more exposed, adversely affecting local value chains and the supply of goods globally. The result: extreme poverty has barely decreased since 2015 and is increasingly concentrated in fragile, conflictprone states, in particular in sub-Saharan Africa.  The prevailing global development model has proven to be unsustainable, externalizing the environmental, social and economic burdens of resource overexploitation especially onto developing countries. The costs of accelerating resource depletion, biodiversity loss and climate change fall hardest on those nations least able ...

When the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was adopted, the world had emerged from the 2007-08 global financial crisis, and economic prospects looked promising. Extreme poverty was declining at an unprecedented rate, and the first Millennium Development Goal (MDG)—to cut the 1990 poverty rate in half by 2015—had been achieved six years ahead of schedule. The momentum generated by these successes fuelled ambitious targets set within the 2030 Agenda, which sought to build on the accomplishments of the past decade. Nearly a decade later, the outlook is less optimistic. The combined effects of climate change, geopolitical instability, and the global pandemic have significantly disrupted the trajectory of progress. Without decisive action to change course, the future remains uncertain. Recent projections from various international organizations on different dimensions of sustainable development paint a sobering picture of what lies ahead if current trends persist (see Table 1).  B...