AfDB President: Africa needs 4 trillion U.S. dollars to meet SDGs by 2030 target
African Development Bank Group (AfDB) President Dr Akinwumi Adesina shared concerns about Africa’s ability to meet UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) by 2030 unless the continent receives a major infusion of cash. According to Dr Adesina, the annual financing gap to meet the SDGs has increased from 2.5 trillion to 4 trillion U.S. dollars.
The funding would be channeled towards climate action, health security, energy access, and ensuring food security on the continent.
“First, the greatest challenge to achieving the SDGs is climate change, which is causing devastation of economies, with droughts, floods, and cyclones. Globally, the damages from climate change run close to 180 U.S. billion dollars annually,” said Dr Adesina.
He further elaborated that Africa alone loses between 7 to 15 billion U.S. dollars yearly due to climate change. This figure is expected to rise to 50 billion by 2050. This means the continent will need at least 277 billion U.S. dollars yearly. However, the continent receives only 30 billion U.S. dollars annually.
Similarly, food insecurity also diminishes Africa’s pursuit of SDGs.
“The rising food prices arising from geopolitical conflicts, supply disruptions, and trade restrictive practices of some major food exporters, pose a great challenge to global food security and efforts to achieve zero hunger,” said Adesina.
He added that in 2023, about 238 million people globally, faced hunger because of the rising cost of food. That’s why the AfDB committed 25 billion U.S. dollars to support Africa’s effort to become self-sufficient in food by 2030.
Regarding health security, he said the Bank is committing the 3 billion U.S. dollars needed for health infrastructure and an additional 3 billion for pharmaceutical tech.
“Finally, we cannot make much progress on the SDGs unless we tackle the debt burden of countries and find new ways to raise more financing. The G20 Capital Adequacy Report showed that multilateral development banks could raise an additional $1 trillion through a series of actions, including hybrid capital, enhancing of their callable capital by credit risk agencies, increasing risk appetite, optimizing their balance sheets, among others” he added.
Dr. Adesina called on developed nations to increase support by devoting at least 0.70% of their gross national income to official development assistance.
