10 min in · 9% of the speech · 235 words
Last year OECD donors spent about $175 billion on development assistance... a 23% drop year-on year. And yet military expenditures approached $3 trillion.... capping 11 straight years of growth. All the while progress on the SDGs has stalled at just over a third of targets, and developing countries are now paying the price for supply chain disruptions they did not cause and cannot cure. The contrasts could not be more stark. We must better prioritize how our resources are spent by augmenting development assistance, addressing debt burdens, reforming the international financial architecture, fulfilling our Sevilla and Paris commitments. And implementing the programmes of action for LDCs, LLDCs, SIDs, as well as the AU’s Agenda 2063. Because where we have done so, the results are clear: Over the past decade, nearly one billion people have gained access to safely managed drinking water. Electricity now reaches 92 per cent of the world’s population. And internet access has risen from 40 per cent to 74 per cent. Behind these figures are healthier children, more resilient communities, greater opportunities for women and girls, and renewed hope. These gains show that accelerating the SDGs is possible when developing countries and development partners work in concert. This indeed is a shared responsibility. Developing countries must also intensify their own efforts through domestic resource mobilization and plug any leakage or corruption, including capital flight — A plague that, until recently, undermined development in my own country under a repressive, authoritarian regime.
