African economies lost US$ 13.7 billion to harsh climate events, following scant progress in adopting and domesticating disaster risk reduction policy in Africa.
This was revealed in a report produced by a team of experts convened by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), in collaboration with African Union Commission, the United Nations Development Programme Regional Bureau for Africa (UNDP-RBA), and the African Development Bank (AfDB) ahead of the 10th Session of the Africa Regional Forum on Sustainable Development (ARFSD-10) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
On the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 13, the report shows 60 percent of worldwide climate disasters were recorded in Africa. 12.5 million Africans were adversely impacted by climate disasters.
Only 29 countries have national risk reduction strategies in Africa. Few African countries have mainstreamed climate change into national plans which are highly lopsided on building resilience in the agricultural sector alone.
Africa is making progress in 12 of the 17 SDGs, but the current pace of progress is insufficient to achieve the goals by 2030, according to an experts report on the progress on Africa Sustainable Development.
The report indicates that progress on the SDG agendas varies across subregions. West and North Africa are the best performers. While East Africa has relatively low performance.
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“None of the subregions is on track on achieving the SDGs goals. There is also a general issue of lack of data in tracking the progress in Africa,” says the experts report.
Antonio Pedro, deputy executive secretary for programme support at the ECA underlined the lack of robust data as a major hurdle in tracking progress accurately. Improving data systems to effectively monitor and achieve the SDGs is essential, he stressed.
“Addressing wide-ranging challenges—including social, political, environmental, and economic—is essential; specific focus areas like women’s empowerment, peacebuilding, and security need targeted attention,” said Pedro, stressing the need to take advantage of technological advances, including artificial intelligence, to target interventions and achieve the SDGs with greater efficiency.
He said there is a need to foster domestic resource mobilization through evolving a better and innovative tax system. Countries need to improve institutional governance, strengthen data collection, analysis and reporting and devise better strategies for debt restructuring.
