New Global Sustainable Development Agenda: A Focus on Africa

This paper focuses on how the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) may ‘play out for Africa’, an element including the interfacing of the SDGs and Africa's Agenda 2063. Through critical document and discourse analysis, the paper deconstructs meaning from the texts. What emerges is that there are ‘the good’ and ‘the bad’ in the SDGs in terms of where Africa wishes to be. Issues that include gender and women, education, desire to prioritize Africa and technology emerge strongly. However, there are glaring omissions: the silence on reforming the United Nations and other global multilateral political institutions, addressing land‐grab concerns, the much popularized green economy agenda and equity. The paper concludes that, if the SDGs are to be a vehicle for poverty eradication in Africa, then the continent needs to do more for itself, including domestic mobilization of financial resources.