How the pandemic has impacted our Sustainable Development Goals

COVID-19 has set us back as a community, country and continent, and it is going to take collaboration on multiple levels to get back on track with the United Nations’ (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This according to University of Cape Town’s (UCT) vice-chancellor, Professor Mamokgethi Phakeng, in an international podcast.

Invited as an impassioned advocate for SDGs in Africa, Professor Phakeng was speaking on University College London’s (UCL) new podcast, “Unlocking the SDGs: A Blueprint for the Future”, which brings together experts from UCL and beyond to look at working together to address the goals.

Rolled out in 2015 as an update of the UN’s millennial goals, there are 17 SDGs which serve as a global call to tackle everything from poverty, hunger, health and gender equality to environmental sustainability – goals that strongly align with SA’s National Development Plan.

And then COVID-19 hit in 2020.

Impact of COVID-19

“COVID has set us back. It has had a negative effect on the SDGs. Progress that had been made was reversed or damaged. COVID also came at a time when our economy was greatly challenged with very low growth and limited wealth distribution, so it made South Africa one of the most unequal nations in the world,” said Phakeng.

Immediate effects included the increase of people living in extreme poverty and hunger, and the strain put on public health resources, as well as the shift in focus away from pressing diseases such as HIV, TB and malaria.

“It charges us with the responsibility to contribute to increasing African thought leadership in tackling the SDGs with our knowledge of local and continental context.”

“We don’t know what impact this has had on people who have cancer, people who are struggling with HIV, TB, or any other diseases who would have gotten attention pre-COVID. Some of the effects are going to be seen for a long time,” Phakeng said.

The pandemic also impacted SDG four (Quality Education) and SDG eight (Decent Work and Economic Growth), as school and workplace closures affected people with no internet access. In remote areas it has been a challenge to get children back into schools and in universities; first-year intakes are coming in on the back of two years of remote learning.

How does UCT fare with SDGs?

In 2015 UCT embarked on a scoping exercise to tally up its research with the UN goals and revealed that vast parts of UCT research contribute towards SDGs. “That was heart-warming,” Phakeng said. “It was almost like they were designed by us or by Africans for us.”

UCT’s Vision 2030 explicitly states its commitment to finding solutions for a more fair, just and sustainable world, with a huge transformative focus on unleashing human potential.

“It charges us with the responsibility to contribute to increasing African thought leadership in tackling the SDGs with our knowledge of local and continental context.”

Partnerships, collaboration and pooling limited resources

“It doesn’t matter how good we think we are, we will not be able to do this alone. And so we’ve got to work with other institutions,” said Phakeng.

“Universities have a critical role to play through research – research that emanates from an understanding of local context – and in developing a capacity to enable society to solve its own problems. And we can do this better in partnership.”

Enter the African Research Universities Alliance (ARUA), comprised of 16 universities across 10 nations, of which UCT is a co-founder. With a dual research focus on climate, along with developing sustainable livelihoods to reduce poverty and inequality, it relies on collaboration between African centres of excellence, as well as the Global North.

“Pooling limited resources is important because with that we can generate a critical mass that could more effectively support a growing number of researchers by developing African capacity.”

Along with the common goal of building on the culture of research in Africa, it pools limited resources to tackle the big problems UCT couldn’t take on alone.

“Pooling limited resources is important because with that we can generate a critical mass that could more effectively support a growing number of researchers by developing African capacity, while we deepen our partnerships with the continent and attract partnerships with researchers outside of Africa,” Phakeng explained.

The SDGs have given ARUA common problems to focus on. 

What was perhaps trickier was finding like-minded partners. The decision was made to focus on research-intensive universities, making sure it was not limited to South Africa but all regions, which would also act as a voice for the importance of research on the continent.

“It came from a recognition that when you have limited resources, not only do you have to bring them together through collaboration so that you can have a much bigger impact, but you also have to come to a place of comfort with differentiation. We can never be the same; some universities will have different strengths.”

Bringing together great minds

In 2021 UCT convened the International Summit on SDGs in Africa, bringing together leading academics, NGOs, government stakeholders, businesspeople and thought leaders to engage in conversations and accelerate action around SDGs in post-pandemic Africa. The summit was unique in that it brought such a varied group of parties to work together.

“We can’t take care of ourselves alone. We’ve got to work with others.”

“We grappled with the important complexities and dilemmas that the continent faces in achieving the SDGs by 2030, and pushing the boundaries of current thinking and practice.

“We’re trying to get people outside of their comfort zones to see how we can come up with integrated solutions, rather than thinking that each one should work on their own.”

We have to work together

“The pandemic has demonstrated what dire effects a global crisis can have on humanity as a whole. The effects of climate change and the expectation of more pandemics make it critical that as an international community, we work together to help build up the resources of our weakest members.

“The best way to do it is to focus on achieving the SDGs together as soon as possible.”

The other lesson from the pandemic is that no problems are unique to one country. Phakeng also strongly believes that the poor and marginalised, whose numbers are growing daily, need to be part of the conversation. To see change, you need the buy-in of those most affected, she said.

“I always say global is local; local is global. The challenges just manifest differently. The fact is that we can’t take care of ourselves alone. We’ve got to work with others.”