Reducing poverty rate in Africa in accordance with the the United Nation’s (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will require huge financial investments, improved access to financial services and provision of better healthcare.
This is according to Access Bank’s Head, Sustainability, Omobolanle Victor-Laniyan who observed that achieving the key points in SDGs would require private-public sector partnerships.
Victor-Laniyan, who spoke on the CNBC Africa’s ‘Closing Bell’, stressed on the need for private and public sector players to collaborate to meet up with the remaining 10 years’ timeline for the implementation of the SDGs.
She said: “Achieving success in implementation requires a lot of financial investment. Research on the estimated cost of eradicating poverty globally pegs it at about $66 billion per year. While the annual investment required to improve infrastructure; that’s clean water, power, transportation, and agriculture could total to about $7 trillion.That is a substantial amount, the government alone cannot tackle the SDGs at the national level, businesses and private institutions have a key role to play.’’
She submitted that it is an onerous task that cannot be expected to be borne alone by the public sector.
She continued: “The private sector can behave differently. Issues around development offer opportunities for private sector organisations that are innovative. Challenges require solutions, and as the private sector, we could provide those solutions. The private sector can proffer these solutions by innovating appropriately across various SDG areas, such as building sustainable cities, climate-smart agriculture, clean energy, improved healthcare and so on. All of these require not only the dynamism but also the funding of the private sector working in very close partnership with governments and communities.”
