All sectors involvement in sustainable devt
From Sevilla to New York, world leaders, businesses, and civil society continue to find ways and means for funding and delivering sustainable development for people and the planet. While progress on the Sustainable Development Goals has been slow and the expected commitments to advance them have been disappointing, what is clear is that the people who so much need to be lifted out of poverty can no longer wait.
Two major events shaping progress on funding and delivery of the global goals are underway, with one concluded in Sevilla, Spain, from June 30–July 3 under the aegis of the 4th International Conference on Financing for Development and another happened in New York, United States, at the High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development from July 14 to 23, 2025. Both events provide an opportunity for government, business, and civil society to dialogue, review progress and chart a new path for accelerating better developmental outcomes for a prosperous world.
Whereas no one sector can do it alone, the resources needed to lift millions out of poverty must come through a whole-of-sector approach. From the government leading on fair taxes, curbing corruption, and blocking illicit financial flows, to businesses addressing consumer rights, paying fair wages, and curbing exploitation across value chains, along with civil society providing and delivering services to the vulnerable across communities, holding the system accountable, and protecting and promoting human rights, among others.
The space for civil society to do this must be enabling. As countries, including Nigeria, focus on ease of doing business, they must also ensure the ease of citizens’ participation and civil society representation of the issues affecting the vulnerable in different parts of the country. While civil society inclusion in policy design and implementation may seem inconveniencing at first, the returns on investment far outweigh the apprehension that comes with their engagement.
Each sector must play its role in a manner that is mutually exclusive and complementary with the ultimate goal of leaving no one behind. We must acknowledge progress on tax reforms already made by the Nigerian government. What remains is how these reforms bring prosperity to the people and sectors that propel the engine of the economy, development, and democracy. In particular, the new laws improve tax regulations for the social and solidarity economy and institutions within it.
With GDP expected to grow between two and three per cent by the end of 2025, we can not afford to measure progress by this alone.
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In addition to the GDP, we must measure progress by what happens in the social and solidarity economy—how many Nigerians are out of poverty, social protection, the provision of public services, employment, care work, taxation and innovative financing mechanisms, trade, stewardship of the commons, as well as governance.
If the current crop of political leaders must learn anything, it is how citizens have reacted to the death of former President Buhari. While the reactions are mixed, negative sentiments about his time in office, policies, and impact on the citizens can not be ignored in a hurry. The structural injustices that permeate his time persist, and they need to be addressed within the context of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and Agenda 2063 of the African Union, not forgetting ECOWAS 2050.
Understandably, no country is immune to the shocks, vulnerabilities, geopolitics, and volatility that exist in our world today, but this must not be an excuse for not bringing innovation to our policies and politics as we find ways to scale current interventions across the critical themes of health, education, social protection, and delivery of public services while protecting fundamental principles such as freedoms of expression, association and assembly.
Mr President’s commitment to protect these fundamental principles is instructive. It is the collective hope of citizens that institutions in governance will turn this commitment to action in ways that put Nigeria on the map as a democracy but also reinforce its role within the African region as the real giant.
