In order to ensure that the sustainable development goals are being achieved, it is imperative to put in place a robust monitoring and evaluation framework to track progress, identify areas of concern, monitor financial resources allocated to the set priorities and assess the overall impact of the key policies and pro-grammes. The monitoring framework should also provide for multi-stakeholder reviews at various levels;
a common analytical framework across all countries and regions; and well-coordinated interventions to strengthen statistical capacity of institutions responsible for data gathering and analysis.
The monitoring framework for the sustainable development goals should, ideally, build on existing in-stitutional mechanisms, principally those used for the Millennium Development Goals, noting and cor-recting for identified weaknesses. Particular attention should be paid to the emergence of new themes in the sustainable development goals that were not part of the Millennium Development Goals; issues of national ownership; selection and adaptation of targets and indicators to national circumstances; building capacities of national statistical systems; and institutional roles and responsibilities.
A common reporting framework for the indicators will be required to allow for comparability, coordina-tion, credibility and sustainability of monitoring and evaluating of performance and results across coun-tries, subregions and regions. Key institutions, which include the African Union Commission, ECA, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) Agency, African Development Bank, United Na-tions Development Programme (UNDP) and United NaNa-tions Environment Programme (UNEP) among others, could lead monitoring and reporting at the regional level, while the Regional Economic Communi-ties will take responsibility for collating performance and results at the subregional level. National statisti-cal systems should be strengthened to collect, collate and analyse national and subnational data. National monitoring and evaluation programmes should be integrated into statistical capacity-building from the outset so as to ensure a reliable supply of core statistics with which to monitor and evaluate the achieve-ment of the sustainable developachieve-ment goals.
I. Conclusion and recommendations
Conclusion
Africa has recorded sustained and impressive economic growth, although this growth needs to be more inclusive and translated into jobs and improved human well-being. Despite encouraging progress, consid-erable social-development challenges still persist, in particular poverty and inequality. The environment
extricably linked to social dimensions such as health, gender and food security. Land, soil, water, forest, biodiversity, marine ecosystems and mineral resources form the basis of primary production and support key sectors that drive socioeconomic development. Management of natural capital is, therefore, critical as Africa pursues sustainable growth pathways and structural transformation. Achieving sustainable devel-opment also necessitates addressing the challenges of climate variability and change.
The path towards sustainable development requires significant policy shifts and the scale of resources required for the achievement of the proposed sustainable development goals will be enormous. National, regional and global institutions as well as development partners will be required to work together in ar-ticulating and mobilizing the appropriate and adequate means of implementation to achieve the goals and targets proposed in this report. A robust monitoring, evaluation and reporting framework is crucial to the attainment of the goals.
Recommendations
The achievement of the proposed goals will require the following, among others:
Strengthening political leadership and stakeholder participation, which are crucial for own-ership, commitment, galvanizing support, mobilizing resources and ensuring accountability.
Mobilization of adequate means of implementation. Although external financial resources are required to implement the sustainable development goals, Africa must also take active responsibility for its own development. Measures must be vigorously pursued to enhance do-mestic resource mobilization and curb illicit financial flows, attract foreign direct investment and create effective financing structures. Development partners should complement domestic efforts at capacity and technology development through effective international cooperation programmes.
Promotion of good governance, transparent and accountable leadership, effective institutions as well as responsive and effective global partnerships. This would require appropriate human and institutional capacity-development strategies and programmes.
ECA should collaborate with other regional institutions in the development and application of appropriate monitoring and evaluation frameworks for the goals, targets and indicators, the development of databases to facilitate performance-tracking and the provision of techni-cal support to countries.
I. Introduction
A. Background and context
The formulation of sustainable development goals is among the key commitments agreed upon at the 2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20). The outcome document The Future We Want (UN, 2012c) was endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly in its resolution A/RES/66/288. This document recognizes that the development of goals could be useful for providing focused and coherent action on sustainable development and emphasizes that the goals should address and incorporate in a balanced way all three dimensions of sustainable development and their inter link-ages, among other factors. The conference also recognized that the goals should be coherent with and inte-grated into the United Nations post-2015 development agenda and called for an inclusive and transparent intergovernmental process that is open to all stakeholders.
In January 2013, the General Assembly established an intergovernmental Open Working Group to steer the formulation of the sustainable development goals. A High-Level Political Forum on Sustainable De-velopment was established as another outcome of Rio+20 to provide political leadership and guidance for sustainable development and constitute a forum for reviewing commitments and objectives related to sustainable development. Africa established the High-Level Committee on the post-2015 development agenda to further strengthen political leadership in the region. In May 2013, the African Union Summit of Heads of State and Government mandated the committee to oversee and provide political guidance on the Africa process. The committee was also mandated to finalize the Common African Position (CAP) and ensure that the priorities identified were integrated into the post-2015 development agenda.
To deliberate on the main outcomes of Rio+20 and their implications for Africa, ECA, in collaboration with the African Union Commission, the African Development Bank and the United Nations Depart-ment of Economic and Social Affairs, convened the Africa Regional ImpleDepart-mentation Meeting (Africa-RIM) from 19 to 21 November 2012. The meeting outcome document on the post Rio+20 follow-up processes represents Africa’s collective input into the United Nations General Assembly processes on Rio+20 follow-up, including the sustainable development goals.
The meeting emphasized that the goals should be based on clearly defined priority areas that enjoy broad consensus across the region’s diverse stakeholders. Through this Africa should, among other outcomes:
Effectively speak with one strong voice to articulate and galvanize international support around sustainable development goals that are well aligned with its sustainable development priorities
Lay a firm foundation for the ownership, championing, domestication and implementation of activities towards the achievement of the sustainable development goals by regional and subregional organizations, countries and major stakeholder groups
Mobilize, enhance understanding and strengthen capacity of regional and subregional organi-zations, countries and major groups in the development and subsequent implementation of programmes and activities towards the achievement of the set sustainable development goals
Enhance linkages across national, subregional, regional and global priorities.
Furthermore, ECA, the African Union Commission, the African Development Bank and the United Na-tions Development Programme - Regional Bureau for Africa (UNDP-RBA) jointly organized subregion-al and regionsubregion-al consultations on the post-2015 development agenda in Africa. These consultations were held as follows: Accra in November 2011; Mombasa, Kenya, in October 2012; Dakar in December 2012;
and Hammamet, Tunisia, in March 2013. The regional consultation in Hammamet aimed, among other outcomes, to identify Africa’s priorities for the post-2015 agenda; identify enablers and critical success factors for the post-2015 development agenda; and align the post-2015 priorities with other development
programmes and agendas including, Rio+20 and the New Partnership for Africa’s Development. The meeting adopted an outcome document in which it agreed that the post-2015 development agenda should incorporate the Rio+20 outcomes and the outcomes of Africa-wide initiatives, national and regional con-sultations as well as United Nations forums, among others..
The Hammamet meeting also agreed that the post-2015 development agenda should:
(a) Emphasize inclusive economic growth and structural transformation
(b) Reorient the development paradigm away from externally-driven initiatives towards domestical-ly-inspired and funded initiatives that were grounded in national ownership
(c) Prioritize equity and social inclusion and measure progress in terms of both the availability and quality of service delivery
(d) Pay greater attention to vulnerable groups such as women, children, youth, the elderly, people with disabilities and displaced persons
(e) Focus on development enablers as well as development outcomes, particularly structural eco-nomic transformation and inclusive growth, innovation and technology transfer, human devel-opment, and financing and partnerships.
The sustainable development goals consultations in Africa, including the preparation of the Africa Re-gional Report on sustainable development goals, are contextualized within the framework of the Africa consultations on the post-2015 development agenda and Rio+20 follow-up processes.