Life has improved for many Africans in the past 20 years. But there is a growing sense that progress was slower than it could have been and that a business as usual approach is not likely to lead to achievement of the African Union’s Agenda 2063 or the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This report identifies the capacities that African countries need in order to take advantage of the opportunities presented by the SDGs to build economies that can sustain their development aspirations. It identifies areas for strengthening capacity and capacity-enabling approaches for a range of stakeholders, including international partners. It offers policymakers a new approach to development — one that puts Africans in the driver’s seat. And it shows how countries can improve people’s lives in ways that are consistent with the ACBF vision of an Africa capable of achieving its own development. The report describes a new, more holistic, comprehensive, and coordinated approach,
one that involves multiple stakeholders, including intended beneficiaries and the private sector. The approach seeks to re-energize Africans with the spirit of working together toward collective prosperity, a common destiny under a united and strong Africa, by building a set of transformative capacities that reinforce a new sense of identity and create a new culture of self-determination and results. The key message emerging in this report is that limited human and institutional capacity will constitute a major obstacle to successful implementation of the SDGs. Implementation agencies, sectors, and ministries often lack people with the skills needed to achieve results, and public resource allocation to build capacity is often inadequate, unpredictable, and irrational.
