A decade of progress, innovation, resilience, and Africa’s path forward

The rush to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) before the 2030 deadline can seem overwhelming. Africa has a long way to go to make these goals a reality. However, they can be met if the continent collaborates and unlocks its inner strengths. With the right investments, Africa’s significant youth population can be empowered to strengthen the economy, minimize societal, infrastructural, and economic inequalities, and move Africa toward a technological revolution.¹ Multinational Development Banks (MDBs) are in a unique position to make this goal a reality.

The African Development Bank (AfDB) has solidified its vision of transforming Africa’s potential into tangible opportunities through its High 5 strategic priorities: “Light up and Power Africa, Feed Africa, Industrialize Africa, Integrate Africa, and Improve the Quality of Life for the People of Africa.”² Over the past decade, these priorities have positively impacted more than 400 million people, providing access to food, electricity, water, health care, and education.³

While our work has made a positive contribution toward achieving the SDGs on the continent, there is still much work to be done if we are to reach these goals by 2030, such as filling existing financing gaps. The Bank’s finances have tripled over the decade, with authorized capital rising from $94 billion in 2014 to $318 billion by 2024.⁴ Similarly, the African Development Fund, our concessional financing arm supporting 37 low-income countries, achieved a record $8.9 billion during its 16th replenishment.⁵

The Bank’s growth has allowed it to provide financing to development projects across sectors throughout the continent. Despite these record investments, development funding requires a threefold increase to provide enough capital to meet the SDGs.⁶ It is imperative that every dollar invested is maximized to make the greatest impact. Financing projects that address the social and institutional determinants of inequality is a way to do just that.⁷

A few key areas in which the Bank is focusing on structural transformation for the SDGs— including health, agriculture, and energy access—are highlighted below.

1. Health access for all. The COVID-19 pandemic underscored Africa’s vulnerability in global health supply chains, and unequal health infrastructure left many Africans without access to medications or health care services.⁸ In response, we established the $3 billion African Pharmaceutical Technology Foundation to enhance local manufacturing of essential medicines and vaccines, complemented by an additional $3 billion investment through our quality health infrastructure strategy. These efforts helped to combat the challenges which arose from the pandemic as well as contributing to sustainable solutions to entrenched health care issues on the continent.
2. Agricultural transformation. The agriculture industry constitutes roughly 23% of sub-Saharan Africa’s Gross Domestic Product and is the number one employer on the continent. Investing in agriculture creates benefits for the economy as well as those experiencing hunger, reduces instances of poverty through job creation, and, if done sustainably, slows climate change, among other advantages.⁹ The Bank’s $7 billion investment under its “Feed Africa” strategy has impacted more than 100 million people,¹⁰ while the Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation initiative seeks to address “cross-cutting issues such as soil fertility management, water management, capacity development, policy support, attracting African youth in agribusiness, and fall armyworm response.”¹¹ Climate-resilient crop varieties have reached over 11 million smallholder farmers across 31 countries, working to produce 100 million metric tons of food by 2025.¹² At the 2023 Dakar 2 Feed Africa summit, co-hosted with Senegal and the African Union, 34 African leaders and development partners mobilized over $72 billion—including $10 billion from the Bank— for national food and agriculture delivery compacts.¹³
3. Electrifying the continent. Africa is the most energy-deficient continent in the world, with 75% of those without energy access in the world residing in Africa.¹⁴ Roughly 600 million people lacked access to energy in 2022.¹⁵ To address this problem, the African Development Bank, in partnership with the World Bank, launched Mission 300 in 2024, an initiative intending to cut that number in half by 2030.¹⁶ The first wave of programs funded through Mission 300 has begun, such as the Accelerating Sustainable and Clean Energy Access Transformation program in East and Southern Africa;¹⁷ the Nigeria Distributed Access through Renewable Scale-UP project, which is aiming to provide 17.5 million Nigerians with new or improved clean energy solutions;¹⁸ the new Regional Emergency Solar Power Intervention Project in Chad, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Togo;¹⁹ and the West Africa Power Pool, which has already made progress by connecting 22.8 million people with new or improved clean energy access.²⁰ This effort will gain further momentum at the High-level Africa Energy Summit in Tanzania in January 2025.²¹

Despite the progress that has been made in projects like these that target multiple SDGs, there remains much more to be done. Africa’s health care security is still in jeopardy, with 99% of vaccines and 95% of medicines being imported as of 2022.²² Additionally, donor health funding has been on the decline.²³ Solutions to Africa’s health care challenges must derive from Africa.²⁴ Summits like the Dakar 2 Feed Africa Summit and the High-level Africa Energy Summit are crucial to advancing the SDGs across sectors through innovative technology and strategic intra-African partnerships. 

Future summits should focus on ways to capitalize on the African Continental Free Trade Area Agreement so countries can leverage their agricultural, pharmaceutical, or energy comparative advantages to grow their economies through intra-African trade.²⁵ The Bank’s Mission 300 and similar initiatives—such as Power Africa by the US Agency for International Development and the Energy Transition Program by the African Union—²⁶ are imperative for Africa’s chances of achieving the SDGs. More financing is needed to ensure the existing gaps to achievement are addressed.

Our endeavors have provided us with important lessons to be learned when implementing development financing in Africa. Globally, the Bank has advocated for innovative financing mechanisms, including rechanneling Special Drawing Rights through MDBs, which could unlock development finance up to eight times the initial value. Africa’s banks have an essential role in transforming the continent, elevating its people, and establishing the continent as a global leader. They must continue to mobilize private and public investments that target critical sectors including transport, energy, agriculture, education, climate change, and health, which affect the indicators of almost all the SDGs. Bringing together various stakeholders through summits is a vital opportunity to build upon already-instrumental initiatives and learn from the past and present experiences of others. These conversations can propel the continent forward and accelerate progress toward the SDGs.