6th session of the Africa Regional Forum on Sustainable Development (ARFSD 2020). On the final day of the sixth Africa Regional Forum on Sustainable Development (ARFSD 2020), delegates distilled key messages from discussions over the week, culminating with the adoption of the Victoria Falls Declaration on the UN Decade of Action and Delivery for Sustainable Development in Africa, as well as an outcome document containing a summary of the deliberations, and key messages emanating from the Regional Forum.

The ARFSD 2020 outcomes will be submitted to the UN High-Level Political Forum in July 2020, as part of the session on reports of regional forums for sustainable development. Among other messages, the Victoria Falls Declaration calls on African Member States to:
Urgently revisit frameworks for the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and Agenda 2063, align their national development plans with the principles of the two agendas. It also calls on African stakeholders to set in motion programmes and projects to deliver on the 10 commitments for action outlined in the political declaration of the SDGs Summit, which convened under the auspices of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in New York, US, from 24-25 September 2019.

Develop and implement people-centered and inclusive national strategies to support the UN Decade of Action and Delivery for Sustainable Development, strengthen mechanisms for the mobilization of resources at the national level, and make efficient use of funding for the two agendas; and
Implement the key messages of the Regional Forum.

The Declaration also calls upon the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and other partners to scale up their support of member States’ capacity development for the implementation of the two agendas, and establish and implement a regional strategy to support the UN Decade of Action through targeted interventions and capacity development in transformational areas, including: climate action; youth education, entrepreneurship and innovation; women’s empowerment; food systems; data and statistics; trade; evidence-based voluntary national and local reviews and integrated planning, monitoring, evaluation and reporting tools; science, technology and innovation; and stakeholder engagement.

Parallel meeting on the sub-theme of the Planet: This session took place on Wednesday and began with a presentation by Samba Thiam, UNEP, on opportunities and challenges relating to several SDGs targets and indicators. He showed data demonstrating that Africa has 20% of global land cover and 65% of the world’s arable land, but unfortunately desertification is affecting 45% of Africa´s land.

Panelists explained that despite the high coverage of access to clean water in some countries, challenges remain in providing access in rural areas, with sparse populations. Meanwhile, in other countries, most electricity is generated using coal, and flash floods end up wetting stockpiles, affecting electricity production. They further noted that, in a best-case scenario, climate change has an effect of 3% on GDP. Resource mobilization and increasing the amount of money available for adaptation is therefore a key element to tackle climate change and also achieving the SDGs.

The importance of science and information necessary for tackling the challenges Africa faces as a very vulnerable continent to disasters, severe weather and extreme climatic events, was also highlighted, and therefore the need to strengthen resource mobilization to build resilience and institutions that generate data was considered paramount.
Participants reflected on how to position STI to play a catalytic role in accelerating SDG implementation in Africa and called for narrowing the technology gap to embrace innovation and harness technology in Africa to address challenges.

Final outcome: On STI, the Forum calls on governments to:
Build capacity in basic sciences and engineering guided by heritage, national priorities and comparative geographical advantage;
Significantly increase investments in R&D, universities and research centers;
>Align critical skills at country level in order to effectively respond to a future that is increasingly driven by STI;
>Establish innovation hubs, incubators and common equipment centers that serve both industry and academia;
>Develop a strategy that co-implements the second, third, and fourth industrial revolution in order to leap-frog sustainable development in Africa 2063;
>Strengthen collaboration and partnership at a continental and regional level to support regional networks and capacity building initiatives;
>Learn from mistakes in other regions;
>Adopt and promote renewable energy technologies to mitigate the impact of climate change and avoid the unsustainable carbon-dependent economy; and
>Redesign the higher and tertiary education curricula by placing emphasis on an education system that produces good and services.

The plenary decided that the Republic of Congo will host the next session in 2021. Check out the ENB summary report throigh the second link above