Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals: Africa’s Challenges and PAID’s Response

Abstract

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have been adopted by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly to replace the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that expired in 2015. Like the MDGs, the SDGs seek to fight against poverty and hunger, promote human rights, and empower all in the society especially women and girls. To support the achievement of the SDGs by African countries, the International Association, Pan African Institute for Development (PAID), during its 47^th Governing Council Meeting held in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso on the 16^th – 17^th of December 2015 discussed “Africa’s development challenges and PAID’s response”. The Meeting notes that Africa’s development challenges are numerous and multi-faceted.  Hence, timely achievement of the SDGs will require an integrated multi-stakeholder approach. This paper reviews the progression from the MDGs to the SDGs, particularly key weaknesses of the MDGs that have been strengthened in the SDGs agenda, and makes proposals for enriching the SDGs further with PAID’s guiding principle of concerted, decent and sustainable development. The paper further discusses how PAID can support implementation of the SDGs agenda through a variety of training activities, research and development programs, and consultancy/support services.

Keywords: SDGs, MDGs, PAID, social economy, sustainable development, development challenges, climate change.