The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Office of the Special Adviser on Africa (OSAA), African Union (AU), the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), and the Institute for Economic Development and Planning (IDEP)  will co-organize an event – Africa Day – on the margins of the 2019 High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF).

Date:  17 July 2019

Venue: Permanent Observer Mission of the African Union to the United Nations

Theme: Strengthening Partnerships to Accelerate Implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and Agenda 2063 in Africa

The theme for the Africa Day Event, is within the context of the AU-UN Framework for the Implementation of Agenda 2063 and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, signed in January 2018, and will aim at promoting the participation of African Member States in the HLPF, including Voluntary National Reviews (VNRs).

The Event will build on the outcomes of the high level meeting held in July 2018 in New York, at the margins of the HLPF, under the theme: ‘Implementing the Sustainable Development Goals and Agenda 2063: A Sharing of Experiences and the Way Forward Post-Africa Regional Forum for Sustainable Development and VNRs’ in which Participating Member States underlined the importance of holding focused discussions during the sessions of HLPF to share good practices, lessons learned and challenges facing African countries in their efforts to implement the SDGs and Agenda 2063 priorities. Moreover, the Event is a follow up of the 5^th session of the Africa Regional Forum on Sustainable Development (ARFSD), African Member States, held in April 2019, in which African Member States adopted key messages and the Marrakech Declaration on Sustainable Development to accelerate the implementation of the SDGs and the goals of Agenda 2063 across the continent. 

In this context, the Africa Day Event will convene participants of the 2019 HLPF, representatives of African Member States, civil society, the private sector, academia, the media, African regional institutions, African Union, United Nations system as well as development partners to examine the extent to which strengthening all partnerships – including amongst UN system entities, traditional development partners, new and emerging development partners, and those involving South-South Cooperation (SSC). The aim is to accelerate implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and Agenda 2063 in Africa.

Notably, the event will clarify where partnerships are most needed to accelerate implementation of the SDGs in Africa and put in place a follow-up mechanism of the outcomes of Africa Day at the HLPF. The event also aims to provide a space to identify persisting gaps and emerging challenges and propose forward-looking recommendations and responsive approaches to policy design, financing and implementation of the outcomes of the VNRs.

Expected outcomes:

• Strengthened dialogue among African policy makers and stakeholders and development partners on common challenges and successful implementation strategies;
• Better informed interventions by African Member States during the September 2019 Sustainable Development Goals Summit, drawing on the Africa Day event set of key recommendations;
• Increased awareness on key areas requiring enhanced partnerships and identification of constructive partnerships to support the preparation and follow-up of VNRs, enhanced support for the alignment of the national development frameworks with 2030 Agenda and Agenda 2063, and boosted mobilization of financing for the implementation of both Agendas; and
• Increased commitment to and mobilization of partnerships to support the operationalization of the Solidarity Fund for Data and Statistics in Africa, as called for in the Marrakech Declaration on Sustainable Development.

Below is the list of African VNRs countries in the four years of the implementation of the SDGs:

List of African VNR Countries in 2016: Egypt*, Madagascar, Morocco, Sierra Leone, Togo*, Uganda.

List of African VNR Countries in 2017: Benin*, Botswana, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Togo*, Zimbabwe

List of African VNR Countries in 2018: Benin*, Cabo Verde, Congo, Egypt*, Guinea, Mali, Namibia, Niger, Senegal, Sudan and Togo*.

List of African VNR Countries in 2019: Algeria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Eswatini, Ghana, Lesotho, Mauritania, Mauritius, Sierra Leone*, South Africa, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Tunisia.

* Member States that conducted a VNR more than once.