As prepared for delivery.

Opening

Mr. President, Zhang Jun,

Excellencies,

Distinguished delegates,

Ladies and Gentlemen.

It is a great privilege to speak on the topic of peace and security in Africa.

Allow me to take this opportunity to congratulate His Excellency Moussa Faki on his re-election as chairperson of the African Union Commission.

The United Nations, including UNDP, will continue to work closely with you as Africa builds forward better from this devastating pandemic.

Introduction: the context

Africa is a continent of unparallel promise. 

It is home to nearly a third of global mineral reserves, nearly two-thirds of the world’s arable land, and Earth’s second-largest rainforest -- in the Congo Basin.

40 per cent of the world’s solar energy potential  lies with Africa. 

And it is the continent of youth: over 70 per cent of the populations of many African countries are under the age of thirty, a dynamic labour force with the potential to enhance development outcomes for decades to come.

Yet much of this immense potential has yet to be realized.

Peace, security and development are intricately linked in Africa. Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and the African Union’s Agenda 2063 will require overcoming complex legacy issues and the challenges that compound them --

-- political instability, weak governance institutions, burgeoning inequalities, a roll-back on human rights and, now, two of the greatest challenges of this generation: the climate emergency and the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic.

Building forward better will require local and global actors across the closely integrated disciplines of humanitarian response, development, and peace to work together to address the root causes of conflict, as is the focus of this Security Council debate today.

Three takeaways

I will focus my remarks on three critical questions today:

First, as a successful recovery will require keeping the pandemic under control, what is the situation at present, including when it comes to vaccine equity, fiscal space, and the socio-economic impacts of COVID-19, and what could the next steps be?

Second, as peace and sustainable development go hand-in-hand, what opportunities do we see around the green economy for countries and regions most affected by conflict to build forward better for people and planet?

And third, as good governance is a building block of a just and fair social contract, what can be done, and what is being done, to support state capacity, heal communities, and create an inclusive future, especially for women and girls?

Permit me, Excellencies, to take each one in turn.

1. A successful recovery will require keeping the pandemic under control

Currently, African countries account for a small fraction of the world’s reported COVID-19 cases and fatalities, relative to its population. This is partly due to the laudable efforts of many African governments and institutions early in the pandemic. 

However, the small percentages mask the crippling financial, social, and political implications of COVID-19 on the Continent.

According to UNDP research this year, approximately six out of every ten people who will become poor by the end of this decade as a result of the pandemic will live in sub-Saharan Africa.

Already, some 40 million Africans have been pushed back into extreme poverty.

As the technical lead of the UN’s socio-economic response to the pandemic, UNDP is focused on saving lives and livelihoods.

Our analysis shows that an “SDG push” now -- combining bold policy choices and investments in governance, social protection, digitalization, and the green economy -- could lift millions of Africans - out of poverty by the year 2030.

One of the first and most important steps of an “SDG push” in and for Africa is to ensure vaccine equity.

Africa’s fragile and conflict-affected regions will get left behind unless decisive actions is taken now. As of mid-May, the majority of African countries had less than 1% of their populations vaccinated.

More support is urgently needed.  

Finance should not be the barrier.

UNDP analysis shows that crushing debt could undermine the ability of African countries to fight the pandemic and build forward better from COVID-19.

This week’s conference on debt relief in Sudan convened by France is an excellent example of how world leaders can come together to support Sudan – in this instance --  in its historic political and economic transition, relieving the burden of debt to unlock development resources and unleash private sector potential as part of building peace.

In Africa, the pandemic has triggered $5 billion in capital outflows and widened the Continent’s development financing gap to $345 billion. 

And yet, less than 1 per cent of debt service in 2021 would cover the cost of 1 billion vaccine doses under the COVAX initiative.

As the UN’s lead development agency, UNDP is working with governments, the UN family, and other partners to support vaccine preparedness and deployment under the leadership of the World Health Organization and UNICEF.

UNDP’s development “offer” focuses on strengthening systems and governance to promote equity, resilience, and sustainability in COVID-19 vaccination efforts across Africa.

In Equatorial Guinea, for example, UNDP is supporting the government to put in place a digital system to strengthen vaccine distribution and supply chains.

In Chad, Libya and Mali, UNDP is helping to establish e-health systems.

These are not one-off interventions, but investments in systemic change that are robust enough to help countries face future health crises.

This brings me to my second point: building forward better with a greener economy.

2. Building forward better with a green economy

Finance will be critical to achieve these goals.

Our teams across Africa contributed to the development of over 40 country-led Socio-Economic Response Plans.

They propose to invest some $60 billion in helping Africa to build forward better from the pandemic – and greener so that recovery drives progress towards the SDGs.

Today, UNDP is supporting 26 countries in Africa to develop and implement Integrated National Financing Frameworks (INFFs) in cooperation with the European Union, the IMF, and other parts of the UN system, to ensure that financing for the COVID-19 recovery is fully aligned with the SDG and the Paris Agreement on climate change.

South Sudan, for example, is using the INFF process to strengthen national peace and planning dialogues and promote gender budgeting. Cabo Verde is using INFFs to develop a blue economy platform with the stock exchange.

At the same time, through our Climate Promise, we are supporting 39 countries in Africa to make their Nationally Determined Contributions more ambitious in line with green COVID-19 recovery efforts.

We are supporting governments to translate their NDCs into new green jobs, to tackle poverty, ensure equality for women and girls, and build resilience to future shocks. In Sudan, our solar for agriculture programme has created jobs especially for women and youth.

Unemployment can fuel deep-seated tensions in regions like Sahel, the Central African region and the Horn of Africa -- the same places where there is incredible potential to create new green jobs through carbon capture, energy trading and environmental protection.

To this end, UNDP has partnered with the Tony Elumelu Foundation to strengthen the capacities of some 100,000 entrepreneurs in Africa over the next decade.

In the Sahel region, this partnership has already trained over 5,000 young people – including the provision of seed capital to over 2,000 young people.

A new UNDP study found that the recently launched African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) will drive sustainable economic development throughout the African continent, so long as it is accompanied by respect for human rights and environmental protection -- particularly for women and youth.

To help harness this massive, potential, the UNDP Borderlands Centre in Kenya will serve the 270 million people living in Africa’s border regions.

One challenge will be to connect African innovators with the potential opportunities AfCFTA may open up – a challenge that UNDP’s Accelerator Labs Network – the world's largest and fastest learning development network, about one-third of which sits in Africa – is already working on with local innovators and entrepreneurs.

And UNDP has signed a new strategic partnership with the AfCFTA Secretariat “to promote trade as a stimulus for Africa’s socio-economic recovery from the COVID-19 crisis, and as a driver of sustainable development.”

For Africa, a sustainable recovery must be powered by sustainable energy.

Three-quarters of the nearly 800 million people worldwide with no access to electricity live in sub-Saharan Africa while, as a result of the pandemic, 100 million more Africans can no longer afford sustainable energy options.

As co-chair of UN-Energy and the High-Level Dialogue on Energy, I join with the UN SG in calling for a year of action on energy -- towards clean, affordable energy for all by 2030, and net-zero emissions by 2050 to stop climate change. 

As we prepare for September’s High-Level Dialogue on Energy, and COP 26 on climate change in Glasgow, I hope, Excellencies, that all Member States will join together in support of this call.

3. Good governance as a building block of a just and fair social contract

And now to my third, critical point: the importance of good governance as a building block of a fair, just social contract.

UNDP has a strong history of working closely with other development, humanitarian and peace actors.

Last year, we supported 10 countries in Africa to carry out elections.. Through our work with human rights and anti-corruption institutions, we helped government systems to be more transparent, accountable and responsive.

In Angola and Zambia, for example, law enforcement officers were trained online on how to uphold human rights standards in policing during a state of emergency.

We examined why people exit armed conflict -- including in Chad and Nigeria --and how to support their transition to civilian life; and took new approaches to building reconciliation and reintegration into peace agreements in the Central African Republic, Libya, Sudan and South Sudan.

With more than 50 per cent of our expenditure and nine of our 10 largest country programmes in fragile and crisis contexts, we determine that when you want to address the root causes of conflict, investing in development works.

Today, COVID-19 threatens to reverse hard-won stability gains, including in the Lake Chad Basin region, and expose vulnerable communities to a heightened level of economic instability.

To address this crisis, UNDP has launched a Regional Stabilization Facility.

It has already supported Governments and affected local authorities to re-establish trust, law and order, opened new channels for cross border trade, improved security conditions for affected communities and enhanced access to livelihood options. 

UNDP is working with the governments of Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso to replicate this experience in the tri-border area of Liptako Gourma.

UNDP does none of this alone: we work with the Peacebuilding Support Office on strengthening core government functions; with partners including the Department of Peacebuilding Affairs and United Nations Environment Programme on climate-related security risks; with ILO, the International Organization for Migration and UNHCR on solutions for the record number of people forced from their homes.

Closing

Excellencies,

Distinguished delegates,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

We believe that building forward better from COVID-19 requires long-term investment in conflict prevention -- and “investing in hope”. And that development investment in vaccine equity, a green economy, and good governance will deliver results.

In the wake of COVID-19, Africa has been at the heart of a surge of innovation -- sequencing the virus’ genomes in Ghana, using digital finance in Nigeria to get cash transfers and social protection to people in need.

The challenge now is to sustain this surge -- giving peacemakers, the innovators and the entrepreneurs -- even and especially in conflict and crisis contexts -- the “oxygen” they need to create new solutions with which to realize their bright future.

As ever, the entire UN system will be on hand to help. Thank you for your kind attention.