Kenya is off track to meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) due to numerous challenges implementing the universal goals by 2030.
Negative effects of Covid-19 pandemic, ongoing drought coupled with ongoing Russia-Ukraine war has disrupted Kenya’s vision to attain the SDG’s at this year when it marks half of the journey since they were launched.
Economic Planning Secretary (EPS) at State Department for Economic Planning Katherine Muoki said the country needs to re-strategise and bring on board different stakeholders to provide momentum for the second last term of the period under which about 200 countries are aimed at addressing various social, political and economic issues.
“A number of indicators of the SDG are off the track. The Russia – Ukraine war coupled with the negative effects of Covid-19 Pandemic and ongoing nationwide drought have precipitated socio-economic challenges that disrupted national supply chains, businesses, and eroding the consumer purchasing power. With these challenges still raging nationwide, the SDGs have been knocked further off track,” said Ms Muoki.
The EPS added, “Moving forward, more concerted efforts will be required to accelerate the SDGs that are stagnating, decreasing and are not progressing fast enough, and come up with solutions to address the various challenges we are facing in the implementation of SDGs.”
Speaking during opening session of 2022 SDGs National multi-Stakeholders conference in Mombasa, she said the National Treasury and Economic Planning has developed an SDGs Recovery and Acceleration Strategy which was launched yesterday to stimulate economic recovery and accelerate progress in the implementation of the SDGs in the last second half of the implementing period.
“Kenya faces a number of challenges in the implementation of SDGs. Some of which include; resource gap in financing SDGs, inadequate tools to monitor and evaluate on SDGs; and data gaps in terms of its quality, timeliness and level of disaggregation as well as absence of baseline data for some of the indicators among others,” she said.
“Measures are needed that are inclusive, sustainable and resilient that promotes the economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainable development by building an inclusive and efficient path for the achievement of the 2030 Agenda. This will require a collaborative effort for coordination and implementation of government programmes and projects at the national and county levels,” said the EPS.
Ms Florence Syevuo, executive director SDGs Kenya Forum acknowledged inadequate financial resources to implement SDGs as a critical challenge in implementation of SDGs.
“The purpose of the 2022 Annual National SDGs Multi-Stakeholders Forum will be to provide an opportunity to all stakeholders to share good practices and experiences in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda in the context of interlocking challenges. Specifically, the objectives of the Forum will be to cascade the various strategies, policies and publications on SDGs implementation in the Country,” she said.
The executive director said the conference will also discuss strategies to accelerate implementation of the SDGs during the Decade of Action and explore resource mobilization strategies and setbacks for SDGs post Covid-19.
“In the next seven years, we shall domesticate financing for the SDGs and involve community through county governments. We are hopeful the government will support our strategies to attain our goals,” said Ms Syevuo.
In 2015, 193 world leaders agreed to 17 ambitious goals or SDGs to end poverty, fight inequality and stop climate change by 2030. The SDGs or Global Goals are a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that by 2030 all people enjoy peace and prosperity.
Ms Florence Syevuo, executive director SDGs Kenya Forum acknowledged inadequate financial resources to implement SDGs as a critical challenge in implementation of SDGs.
“Climate change is one of the greatest crisis facing the world today due to its adverse effects. To combat climate change, the county assemblies can come up with forums like educating and capacity building initiatives to educate the public on climate change mitigation. They can incorporate climate change issues in the county policies and strategies,” said Ms Oduma.[email protected]
