A Renewed Commitment and Sustained Focus Must Be Placed on SDG 8 in Eswatini’s Efforts to Recover from COVID-19 and Achieve Economic Prosperity

In 2015, World Leaders adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).  The 17 SDGs call for action by all countries to promote prosperity while maintaining peace, protecting the planet, the people and building partnerships. With only ten years remaining to achieve these goals, countries are accelerating steps towards ending poverty, fighting inequalities, tackling climate change, and ensuring that no one is left behind.  Every month, the United Nations spotlights one of the 17 SDGs, highlighting its purpose, targets, and criticality in advancing Agenda 2030. This month’s focus is SDG 9: Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure Investment.

BY NATHALIE NDONGO-SEH

As we persevere through the devastating COVID-19 pandemic and its far-reaching socio-economic impacts, the idea of economic growth and prosperity seems like a foreign ideal. Sustained and inclusive economic growth, reflected in Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 8; “Decent work and economic growth”, can drive progress, create decent jobs for all people and improve living standards.

However, the global pandemic has hindered the achievement of SDG 8, and ultimately; the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It has not only disrupted billions of lives but has endangered the economy, with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) anticipating a global recession as bad or worse than that of 2009.

Distressingly, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimates that nearly half of the global workforce is at risk of losing their livelihoods, whilst 114 million people lost their jobs due to workplace closure measures. Working hours, equivalent to 255 million full-time jobs, were estimated to have been lost in 2020: adding up to USD 3.7 million in lost labour income.

Prior to the coronavirus outbreak, one in five countries across the world, particularly those with high levels of poverty, were predicted to see per capita incomes remain stagnant or decline in 2020. Compounded by the destructive economic shocks brought about by COVID-19 such as; disruptions to industrial production, falling commodity prices financial market volatility, and rising insecurity, economic growth is exceptionally unlikely to take place in such countries.

Globally, 150 million people are at great risk of falling into extreme poverty due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with women and young people having experienced the brunt of the pandemic and resultant job losses. Employment losses were higher for women (5 percent) than men, and for young workers (8.7 percent) than older workers.

Across Africa, 39 million Africans are at risk of falling into extreme poverty. Women too have endured job losses at a disproportionate percentage than men, particularly across sub-Saharan Africa, whereby 74 percent of women work in the unprotected and volatile informal economy.

In the Kingdom of Eswatini, the vast majority of Emaswati (75 percent) earn their income from the unguarded informal sector or depend on a person who works in the informal sector. Women constitute 65 percent of the informal sector in Eswatini, whilst youth account for 25 percent. Thus, Emaswati women and young people, much like their global counter-parts, have felt deeply the innate impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The rural poor are at greatest risk of being left behind in Eswatini’s recovery from COVID-19: a significant 59 percent of the population live in poverty, whilst 29 percent live in extreme poverty. Compounded by rising levels of food and financial insecurity amongst households, a high prevalence of HIV and AIDS continues to exacerbate the existing vulnerabilities of Emaswati.

Despite the far-reaching economic impacts of the pandemic, reflected in an economic contraction of 2.4 percent in 2020 and devastations to the manufacturing, tourism, construction and other trade sectors; Eswatini remains optimistic that the economy will recover with an increase in economic output of 2.7 percent in 2021.

However, this will require a coordinated, effective and multi-lateral response that is all-encompassing and founded upon global, regional and national solidarity. In April 2020, the United Nations Secretary-General, Mr António Guterres, released an international guiding framework to support countries’ paths to social and economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. The framework calls for an extraordinary scale-up of international support and political commitment to ensure that nobody is left behind and all people, everywhere, have access to essential services and social protection.

The UN Secretary-General stressed, however, that the recovery from the COVID-19 crisis must lead to a different economy: one which sets the world on a more sustainable development path and enables the global economy to be more resilient to future shocks.

Across the African region, the African Development Bank responded to the emerging COVID-19 crisis by implementing a crisis response facility to support its Regional Member Countries in mitigating the health and economic effects of the pandemic. The Southern African Development Community (SADC) also published a series of bulletins to guide Southern African countries’ recoveries from the socio-economic effects of the pandemic.

In the Kingdom of Eswatini, the United Nations Development System (UNDS) conducted a Rapid Socioeconomic Assessment of COVID-19 in Eswatini and developed a resultant Policy Brief, to enable a broad understanding of the national socio-economic impacts of COVID-19, extending from agriculture and food security to industry, trade and tourism. The Rapid Assessment demonstrated the immense vulnerabilities within the Kingdom, whilst highlighting the devastating possibility of an additional 65,800 people being pushed below the poverty line in 2020 alone. 

In an act of solidary and commitment to the Government and people of Eswatini, the UNDS developed and has since begun implementing the United Nations Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework (UNSDCF) 2021-2025. This framework seeks to enable a “just, prosperous and resilient Eswatini, where nobody is left behind” in the nation’s recovery from COVID-19 and beyond. It addresses the national socio-economic ramifications of the pandemic, whilst seeks to strengthen collaboration and enhance partnerships between the UN, the Government of Eswatini, development partners, academia, the private sector, civil society and other key stakeholders, as well as between UN agencies.

It is without a doubt that Eswatini’s recovery from the pandemic rests upon solidarity and the strength of its partners and partnerships to address the complex, far-reaching and intwined socio-economic repercussions of COVID-19.

With less than ten years remaining to achieve Agenda 2030, we cannot afford to tire in our efforts to achieve SDG 8. A renewed commitment and sustained focus must therefore be placed upon achieving SDG 8, if recovery and resultant economic prosperity are to become a reality for both Eswatini and the world.