Africa sustainable development report 2021: is Africa on track to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030?

Africa has recorded progress on many of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals since 2000; however, the current pace of progress has been insufficient to achieve the Goals by 2030.In the 2030 Agenda, Member States recognized many challenges to sustainable development, including the fact that billions of citizens continue to live in poverty and are denied a life of dignity; rising inequalities within and among countries; enormous disparities of opportunity, wealth and power; gender inequality, unemployment, in particular youth unemployment; the fact that global health threats, more frequent and intense natural disasters, spiralling conflict, violent extremism, terrorism and related humanitarian crises and forced displacement threaten to reverse much of the development progress made in recent decades. The present report describes the status of Africa in its implementation of the 2030 Agenda and a projection of where the region and its subregions will likely be in 2030 if the current trends and pace of progress are maintained. It comprises two main sections.