The world is in crisis: Transforming LDCs is imperative

COVID-19. Climate change. Economic collapse.

These crises are overlapping, existential and concurrent. And they herald great change, some of which is already upon us.

COVID-19 has been the latest catastrophe for Africa’s economies, collapsing commodity prices, disrupting manufacturing and virtually killing off international tourism.

The result has been a sharp reduction in GDP growth. Together with widening deficits, unsustainable debt, and a drop in Foreign Direct Investment and remittances, the effects of COVID-19 will jeopardize the progress of the Least Developed Countries in Africa towards sustainable development for years to come.

The virus knows no borders, and so the vaccine itself must not be subject to nationalism or protectionism. But likewise, climate response plans must be cooperative, ambitious and fair. Economic recovery packages must focus on debt eradication and have the most vulnerable at their heart.

This confluence of crises demands a new solidarity.

46 countries are designated as being the ‘least developed countries’ or LDCs - and 33 of these are in Africa.

These countries, from Angola to Zambia, face multiple challenges, including weak economies and low exports – issues that have only got worse since the pandemic struck. All of these problems are compounded by other challenges like conflict, inequality and climate change.  

A high rate of urbanisation among African LDCs makes cities and urban centres increasingly vulnerable to the impact of disasters. Without strong and purposeful governance that aspires towards structural transformation and sustainable development, economic and social outcomes in these LDCs will remain weak.

A major meeting will be held virtually in Malawi this month to help build an ambitious new programme for action for LDCs to build momentum and partnerships as the final decade of action for the 2030 agenda gathers pace.

The meeting will assess how African LDCs and Haiti are achieving sustainable development, and agree recommendations to help them accelerate progress over the next decade. The meeting will also seek to strengthen support by the international community for the LDCs. 

The outcome of the African Regional Review will lay out plans for a renewed partnership for sustainable development between the LDCs and their development partners. 

That new partnership will be agreed at the Fifth United Nations Conference on the LDCs – known as LDC5 – a major landmark in the efforts of LDCs and their partners to overcome core challenges, including the COVID crisis.  

Hosted by Qatar and taking place in early 2022, decisions made by world leaders at LDC5 will have the potential to transform the lives of no less than a billion of the world’s most vulnerable people.  

Given the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the African Regional Review meeting will be held online and bring together ministers of Finance, Planning and Economic Development from across the continent. They will be joined by representatives from development partner nations, international and regional organisations, the private sector, academia and civil society.

The meeting is based on a bottom-up approach to preparing for LDC5 that ensures the needs of LDCs are clarified and heard. African LDCs have already completed national reviews on development progress and these will be the main inputs for the regional meeting.

LDC5 will represent a reaffirmation of the global commitment to the special needs of LDCs at this critical time. With the COVID crisis still in full flame, climate change untamed and a new economic and debt crisis rolling around the world, the stakes for the conference could not be higher. And so, with a year to go, the preparatory process is already well underway. 

It is not hyperbolic to suggest we are facing a difficult set of complex problems like humanity never has before. And, as is too often the case, it is the weakest economies and the most vulnerable countries that are facing the effects most.

It is precisely because of the scale of our problems that we must be honest with ourselves, and each other. We have the capacity to handle everything ahead of us – we just need the will. We have great multilateral systems of cooperation – we just need to invest in them. And we have incredible energy and activism, especially from our youth – we just need to listen to what they say.

The pandemic has erected physical borders between us, and these will be temporarily. We must not let it erect new ideological or political barriers, which will be far longer lasting.

Great change seems inevitable and just over the horizon. How we meet that change will not only say a lot about the systems we have built but will set the next course for humanity.

Authored by the United Nations Office of the High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States (UN-OHRLLS), which supports groups of vulnerable countries in the United Nations System.