The African Development Bank's Chief Economist and Vice-president, Prof. Kevin Chika Urama, participated in the Fourth United Nations International Conference on Financing for Development (FFD4) in Seville, Spain, to advocate for comprehensive reforms of the global financial architecture to address Africa's development financing challenges and unlock the much-needed investment push for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The conference took place at a time of profound transformation, increasing geopolitical uncertainty, and growing systemic risk. The 2025 Sustainable Development Report (2025 SDR) shows for instance that progress toward achieving the SDGs has fallen far short of expectations, with less than 20 percent of indicators on track and five SDGs particularly far off target: food security and sustainable agriculture (SDG-2), sustainable cities and communities (SDG-11), biodiversity goals (SDG-14 and SDG-15), and peace, justice and strong institutions (SDG-16). On the other hand, the global financing gap has widened considerably over the last five years and now stands at approximately $4 trillion annually, with Africa's structural transformation gap estimated at $402.2 billion by the Bank.
The Chief Economist attended a panel discussion following the presentation of the 2025 SDR where he emphasized that Official Development Assistance is not a sustainable source of development finance, advocating for the international financial community to agree on a sustainable increase in long-term concessional development finance in developing and emerging economies.
