Research pick: Sustaining Sub-Saharan Africa - "Financing for Sub-Saharan African sustainable development: from billions to trillions to action"

Sub-Saharan Africa is developing rapidly with its rich resources although still lags behind those developing regions that are hard on the heels of the developed nations. New research published in the International Journal of Sustainable Development considers how this development might be sustainable and how it might be financed to be so. Samuel Orekoya and Peter Oluleke of the University of Ibadan in Nigeria suggest that trillions rather than billions are needed.

The researchers have investigated the impacts of private, public, and multilateral financial opportunities that could be used to drive sustainable development in Sub-Saharan Africa. They have correlated this with the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, life expectancy, human capital development, and fertility rate with data from 1971 to 2018. The fundamental conclusion is that no single source of financing, whether from the private, public or multilateral sectors is sufficient for the sustainable development of Sub-Saharan Africa. They suggest that government needs to play an active role in encouraging the requisite financial backing of sustainable development but without distorting the economic landscape.

As such, the team recommends that new stable macroeconomic policies should be aimed at creating “a conducive environment for financial sector development”. They add that multilateral development by banks and bilateral donors could also be used to strengthen access to private sources of finance by improving the business and investment climate.

“Development is sustainable if it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs,” the team writes. They point out that inequality jeopardizes the well-being of those in certain areas and in certain social groups while allowing others to benefit greatly. For truly sustainable development to occur in Sub-Saharan Africa, social justice must be integrated into the model to close the social, educational, and economic gaps between different groups and to allow improving equality to persist across the generations.

Orekoya, S. and Oluleke, P. (2020) ‘Financing for Sub-Saharan African sustainable development: from billions to trillions to action’, Int. J. Sustainable Development, Vol. 23, Nos. 3/4, pp.288–308.