African governments should tap into private finance in order to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a United Nations official said on Tuesday.
Walid Badawi, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) resident representative in Kenya, told a forum in Nairobi Kenya’s capital that the issue of SDGs financing poses a serious challenge as government and other traditional sources of funding are not sufficient.
“Recent trends in shifting funding and reductions in aid budgets from developed countries will significantly hamper Africa’s ability to reach the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. So the continent must tap into other larger and more sustainable forms of financing from the private sector,” Badawi said during the high-level symposium on SDG investment mobilization for Africa.
He revealed that Africa is off track in the achievement of many of the 17 global goals that seek to create a more sustainable future for all.
He noted that in order to attract private funding, Africa must develop innovative financial models to ensure investors can achieve returns by investing in SDG areas.
Arif Neky, Senior Advisor for UN Strategic Partnerships and Coordinator of the SDG Partnership Platform in Kenya said that there is need for innovations in financial instruments to respond to the ever-changing and evolving contexts involved in attaining the SDGs.
Neky observed that public investments should be leveraged to attract significant sums of private capital through private sector partnerships and innovative financing instruments.
