By Sizo Nkala
The much-anticipated UN Summit of the Future has come and gone.
It was a multi-stakeholder summit which brought together heads of state and government, intergovernmental organisations, civil society organisations, and non-governmental organisations, among others, to chart the way forward for a world beset by multiple crises from intensifying climate change and violence to widespread poverty and inequality traversing gender, racial, national and regional lines.
The outcome was the adoption of a document titled ‘The Pact for the Future’ with annexures on the Global Digital Compact and the Declaration on Future Generations.
The Pact for the Future is a combination of a sober acknowledgement of the grim realities facing the world and a bold and brave call to action. It presents a bucket list of 56 actions to tackle challenges across different areas including sustainable development and development financing; international peace and security; science, technology and innovation and digital co-operation; youth and future generations; and transforming global governance.
However, in going through the document, one cannot escape the feeling that it is a feel-good agreement with noble intentions but sadly and disappointingly detached from the practical realities of the world we live in.
For wont of space, this article will critically examine some of the key promises made in the document with a focus on Africa. The Pact reiterates the centrality of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that was adopted in 2015 as the guiding framework for the eradication of poverty across the world.
We are just six years from the deadline of the SDGs, and the world has hardly made a dent in eradicating poverty. When the SDGs were adopted in 2015, 736 million people lived in extreme poverty. In 2024, with 60% of the life cycle of the SDGs having passed, about 700 million people, representing 9.2% of the global population, still live in extreme poverty.
Africa is the poverty capital of the world, being home to 61% (429 million people) living in extreme poverty. One would have to be an ultra-optimist to believe the world will do in six years what it has failed to do in the past nine years.
The Pact further promises to mobilise affordable, sustainable and transparent development finance for developing countries. The exorbitant costs associated with corporate finance and the lenders’ emphasis on risk and return make development finance, provided by development banks, governments, donor agencies and NGOs, practically the only option at the disposal of African and other developing countries to access credit to implement much-needed development projects.
Africa has a development finance gap of $1.6 trillion (about half of the continent’s current GDP) until 2030. However, the crippling budget deficits of most African governments and the reluctance of most development funders to avail credit in light of the debt crisis facing many African countries, will make raising even a fraction of the $1.6 trillion by 2030 an uphill task.
Focused on the future, it would have been amiss of the summit to be silent about young people in its agenda. In three of its 56 actions, the summit pledged to promote socio-economic development of the youth, to respect and protect their human rights, and enhance their participation at the national level. This is particularly relevant for Africa, a continent said to have the youngest population with 60% of its people under the age of 25.
By 2030, Africa will be home to 42% of young people in the world. Hence, the empowerment of the youth is crucial to the future of the continent. However, according to the World Bank, about 40% of African children live in extreme poverty. Of the 430 million people aged between 15 and 34 years in Africa, one-third are unemployed, one-third are in precarious employment, while only one-sixth have waged employment.
Further, young people have been violently disenfranchised from political participation. We have seen how peaceful protests led by young people have been brutally crushed in countries such as Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Uganda, Kenya and eSwatini. It is the same states’ gerontocratic elites, who have time and again displayed their indifference to the plight of their young people, who must now be counted on to implement the UN Pact’s lofty pledges to the youth.
Moreover, in its plans to transform global governance, the Pact promises to begin the work of reforming the UN Security Council “as a matter of priority and without delay” and alter the international financial architecture to ensure that it is fit for purpose in addressing contemporary global challenges.
No one doubts that these are legitimate objectives whose realisation would significantly improve global security and prosperity in light of the glaring shortcomings in the structure of the Security Council and the international financial institutions.
Africa, for decades, has denounced its marginalisation in critical global governance institutions and called for the reform of the international security and financial systems to make them more responsive to African interests and concerns.
The only noticeable reform of the Security Council in its 80 years of existence was in 1963 when the number of elected non-permanent members of the council was increased from six to 10. The five permanent members have not yielded to international pressure to reform the council.
At most, they have expressed support for the idea of reforming the council but without taking any concrete action. If the US’s recent proposal of having two permanent seats for Africa devoid of veto power and the relative silence of other permanent members are anything to go by, the reform efforts may hit yet another brick wall.
The reform of the international financial institutions is a no less mean feat as they are dominated by Western powers who, over the decades, have proven unwilling to cede control of their sources of leverage.
Thus, while the Pact makes all the right noises, it is an overly ambitious statement lacking the backbone of a concrete plan to achieve its stated objectives.
* Dr Sizo Nkala is a Research Fellow at the University of Johannesburg’s Centre for Africa-China Studies.
** The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media