Every decade, the United Nations hosts a financing for development, or FfD, conference, offering the world a chance to commit to a shared vision for international development. The next conference, FfD4, will take place in Seville, Spain, at the end of June 2025. This gathering comes at a critical time, as the global economy faces headwinds, multilateralism weakens, and conflicts escalate. It presents an opportunity to think bigger and make radical changes to create sustainable growth and economic transformation for Africa and its global partners.
During the 2024 U.N. General Assembly, the Pact for the Future was introduced, envisioning a world where future generations thrive. While this builds on the Sustainable Development Goals, many of these goals will remain unmet by 2030. For Africa, the consequences of ambitious rhetoric without corresponding action are stark.
Progress on poverty reduction in Africa has stalled since the last FfD conference in Addis Ababa in 2015. Extreme poverty declined marginally from 36.7% in 2019 to 36.5% in 2024. External shocks, including COVID-19 and the mounting impacts of climate change, have reversed earlier gains.