Making sustainable development a reality by 2030 will require a substantial transformation to be made to development practices. The significant increase in the number and quality of social protection systems throughout the Global South brings renewed hope and enthusiasm. In Africa, 48 countries have established flagship programmes, with more than 120 different initiatives being implemented. Social protection is uniquely placed to serve as a tool for connecting different development goals, promoting positive spillover effects and building synergies among efforts to move the 2030 Agenda forward in a more effective way. Seizing this positive change as a catalytic force for the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is a must.

As an effort to support policy implementation and to bring an up-to-date analysis of creative policies blossoming across the African continent, the UNDP World Centre for Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro (RIO+ Centre) and the UNDP Regional Service Centre for Africa have produced this first RIO+ global report, focusing on social protection as key to pursuing sustainable development. The report examines the experiences of Africa and Brazil and captures lessons to provide policymakers with much needed information on existing programmes, their design and implementation processes. It calls for the expansion of the traditional social protection agenda to embrace a larger scope of action - one that promotes long-term change and delivers positive results across all three pillars of sustainable development.

The Social Protection for Sustainable Development (SD4SD) report is based on the contributions and  recommendations of the International Seminar on Social Protection held in Dakar, Senegal in April 2015. These recommendations were subsequently endorsed by African Ministers at the First Session of the Specialised Technical Committee on Social Development, Labour and Employment and at the Twenty-Fifth Ordinary Session of the Assembly of the Heads of State and Government of the African Union. The event was organized by UNDP (RIO+Centre and the Regional Centre in Addis Ababa), the African Union and the Governments of Senegal and Brazil. The Dakar Seminar identified a mounting demand for an updated analysis of the current state-of-the-art of social protection and for more dialogue between Africa, Brazil and the Global South for the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals.