Post-2015 Development Agenda

With less than three years before the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) target date of 2015, development practitioners, including agencies of the United Nations (UN), are already initiating consultations aimed at defining the contours of the post-2015 development agenda.

The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), with the African Union Commission (AUC) and the United Nations Development Programme–Regional Bureau for Africa (UNDP–RBA) organized a regional workshop in Accra, Ghana, in November 2011 to engage policymakers on dialogue on the issue. The five regional commissions of the UN are also drafting a report on the post-2015 development agenda, entitled Beyond 2015: A Future UN Development Agenda. It is expected to provide the main elements of a global development agenda from a regional perspective.

Any meaningful discussion of Africa’s priorities after 2015 must, however, be grounded in Africa’s experiences and lessons learned with the MDGs. A review of earlier reports in this series suggests that the quality of social service delivery, inequality, unemployment (particularly among youths), vulnerability to shocks, economic, social and environmental sustainability of performance, and inclusive growth are recurrent challenges in Africa and, consequently, should inform the post-2015 agenda.

The quality of service delivery remains a particular concern, despite good progress on social indicators, particularly for net primary school enrolment. Poor completion rates, lack of qualified teachers, doctors and skilled birth attendants, and weak education and health infrastructure are a few examples of poor quality. It is therefore important for policymakers to ensure that social services meet minimum standards of quality.

This series of reports has consistently revealed that Africa’s aggregate performance on the MDGs masks wide income, gender and spatial inequalities in accessing social services. Left unchecked, these trends are likely to lead to social tensions and unravel progress made on the MDGs. Hence it is imperative that policymakers design and implement policies that address inequalities, promote social cohesion and sustain Africa’s progress on the MDGs.

This year’s report also underscores the poor capacity of Africa’s recent rapid growth to commensurately boost jobs and reduce poverty. Contributing to this pattern is the dependence by several African countries on primary commodity exports and capital-intensive extractive industries, which have few or no linkages with other sectors of the economy. Collectively, these factors create and reinforce the “enclave” structure of these countries, which undermines their capacity to translate economic growth into strong job growth and poverty reduction.

The MDG experience is characterized by large and persistent variations in performance across sub-regional, national and sub-national jurisdictions. Sub-regionally, North Africa still outperforms on most MDGs, and may provide opportunities for sharing experience with other sub-regions (given differences in contexts, of course). Nationally, variations in performance often reflect differences in initial conditions. Sub-national variations, though, tend to be marked by gender and spatial disparities in outcomes.

The past decade has laid bare the vulnerabilities of countries to socio-economic and climate-related shocks – as seen in the global financial crisis, sharp increases in food prices, the intensity and frequency of natural hazards and recurrent conflicts. The post-2015 agenda must seek to promote African resilience by addressing associated vulnerabilities. Economic activity should reflect efforts to adapt to and mitigate the effects of climate change, as well as to move towards a low-carbon growth path.

These broad outlines find expression in this year’s Assessing Progress in Africa towards the Millennium Development Goals, and offer a perspective on the continent’s development priorities for the post-2015 development agenda.