Change that School Report!

by Lionesses of Africa Operations Department

Our bedtime reading this week has been the UN’s school report on the SDGs 2024 (here). To call it a school report, of course, is a little generous, because the UN is reviewing its own efforts to galvanise the world behind the SDGs and deliver results, certainly not written by a stern third party.

“The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2024 reveals that progress has ground to a halt or been reversed across multiple fronts, despite reaffirmed pledges…An additional 23 million people were pushed into extreme poverty and over 100 million more suffered from hunger in 2022 compared to 2019. While some health targets improved, overall global health progress has decelerated alarmingly since 2015. The COVID-19 pandemic has undone nearly 10 years of progress on life expectancy. Education, the bedrock of sustainable development, remains gravely threatened as many countries see declines in student math and reading skills, jeopardizing core competencies that will determine future prosperity.”

- see what we mean. What is going on?

With no understanding of irony given the Millennium Development Goals were inked in the year 2000 which changed to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals in 2015 (so that’s 24 years so far), António Guterres, the Secretary-General, United Nations says:

“We have a rescue plan before us, in the [SDG Summit] political declaration. Now is the time to lift the declaration's words off the page, and invest in development at scale like never before." 

In 2022 we wrote: “We are two years into the UN’s ‘Decade of Delivery’ for the SDG’s, and as the UN, as Shareholders and now Regulators are all saying - the time for talking is over.” (here), but given there had been at the time 22 years of talking, also termed ‘listening and learning’ in so many development reports, we are still amazed at how naïve we were to think things would change, after all - why break a habit of a lifetime.

US$billions have flowed into the Global South, driven by the UN and various Governments, so what has happened, why have there been such poor results, especially in the more tangible areas where money can be directed accurately and effort driven with pinpoint accuracy such as education (SDG4). “Here’s $1 million, go build and staff a school” kinda thing, as the truly inspirational Lioness Noëlla Coursaris Musunka the Founder & CEO of Malaika has shown so clearly.

Close to Lubumbashi in the DRC, Noëlla has single handedly created access to education for girls through her school, including water, healthcare and food security (given the amazing organic farm that she has built for the school), which in turn has empowered an entire community that previously lacked so much of the basics of life. Yet again a Lioness whose actions spread deeply into uplifting the surrounding community (see here and here if you want to see a few more examples), exponentially increased through her training of adults in her technical centre and in sport via her community centre.

Noëlla’s community-driven and girls-first education approach is a model that can be replicated across the world, so why is it not?

The World Bank President said at their recent Spring meeting that it takes nineteen months for project approval (see here), and promised to cut that down to a third of the time, so 6-7 months, but this is still a killer of momentum. Think not? Just look how spending one month (August) on the beach in the EU, kills deals. The trouble is that govt and quasi-governmental organisations simply do not appreciate just how many great deals get killed by the strangling of momentum. An expert in this, Stephen A. Schwarzman says “Time kills all deals”, and he should know given he runs Blackstone (AUM a cool $1 trillion).

Although we generally look at the last 24 years of the MDGs and SDGs, it’s easy to forget that foreign aid did not simply start just because the year 2000 had a catchy song or fears of a computer meltdown. As William Warshauer, President and Chief Executive Officer of TechnoServe, who does incredible work across the Global South wrote recently in the World Economic Forum (here): “Since 1960, the world has spent roughly $5.7 trillion on foreign aid.”  $5.7 trillion!

Continuing he asks a very direct question: “Of that enormous sum, how much has been effective in fighting poverty?

The shocking truth is that we don’t really know. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) admits, “the effectiveness of foreign aid remains an unresolved issue.” A 2018 study concurs: “The poverty-reducing effects of aid are not well-documented.”

In addition, sadly as we explained in our ‘You get what you measure’ article earlier this year (here), the data being collected on the SDGs is minimal with SDG5 being the worst (in fairness SDG7 Energy where the big bucks reside is decent).

So we don’t measure and we don’t follow up. Hmmm.

Hopefully many will take up the challenge from the World Bank as articulated by Margaret Kuhlow of the US Dept of Treasury who said (here 1:30:05): “[to] move to start to measure and incentivize outcomes rather than inputs.”

In our area of interest of SDG5 (which of course ignores the fact our membership are building incredible businesses and solutions to all SDGs), there is a record amount of money flowing into women’s businesses: “mobilising a total of US$33.63 Billion to support gender equality and women’s economic empowerment since 2018 (2018-2023)”, (here) (certainly something to celebrate). Obviously the 2X Challenge works across the globe, but still US$8.2 billion went to sub-Saharan Africa yet if you look at investment into women owned and run businesses in Africa this is stuck at the 2% level (‘Africa: The Big Deal’ here).

It must be time, as William has done, to call this out. Constantly encouraged to go big and get the results just isn’t working. As Margaret says: “Dollars are an input not an outcome or an impact and you don't want the institutions incentivized to go big and expensive when you could maybe have more impact, smaller and less expensive.”

Think that SDG5 is not part of your mandate? As US Vice President Kamala Harris points out (here), every issue is a woman’s issue, Economy; Climate Change; National Security; Health Care; Education; Criminal Justice reform. You name it!

Pressed home by the great Durreen Shahnaz, Founder and CEO of IIX, who wrote (here): “I hope more people will acknowledge and address the gendered nature of many global issues. I hope we move past excuses like, “We can’t work with you because we’re focusing solely on climate change, not women’s empowerment,” or, “Our focus is on peace and security, not women.” Many of these issues profoundly and disproportionately affect women, and our approach must reflect that.”

So maybe the way forward towards success in the SDGs and a better school report is through women and through our inspirational 1.8 million Lionesses of Africa members. Give it a try. You will have more impact going smaller and less expensive. Of course, it will involve more work than just dropping $400 million into the lap of a major global bank (yes, you know who you are), but you’ll get the impact data back and instead of sleepless nights, you will sleep soundly knowing you are changing and saving lives on the ground and at a community level. If you are scared that you can’t go that small, as we keep on saying - our members own businesses of all sizes, for example one saves lives across 3,000 hospitals (the inspirational Temie here), and another has a cut-and-paste template for education across the Global South. We can’t imagine that these are not big enough…

Stay safe.