Accelerating Sustainable Development in Africa: Country lessons from applying integrated approaches

Livelihoods, poverty reduction efforts and economic growth in Africa are highly dependent on the quality and availability of natural resources, and are thus extremely vulnerable to degradation of those resources and to climate change. Development efforts hence need to equally embrace economic, social and environmental sustainability as emphasized in the recently adopted ‘2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’ as well as ‘Agenda 2063 – The Africa We Want’. Several countries have made notable progress since 2005 through their partnership with the Poverty-Environment Initiative of UNDP and UN Environment. The work that African governments and the Initiative have done together offers many lessons on how to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and Africa 2063 goals within national contexts. The examples provided in this publication illustrate how policymakers, government staff and development practitioners can start putting in place what the former UN Secretary General called “a practical twenty-first century development model that connects the dots among the key issues of our time: poverty reduction; job generation; inequality; climate change; environmental stress; water energy and food security.”