Remarks at Second Africa High-Level Forum of South-South and Triangular Cooperation for Sustainable Development

Your Excellency, Yoweri Museveni, President of the Republic of Uganda

Right Honourable, Robinah Nabbanja, Prime Minister of the Republic of Uganda

Your Excellency Dr. Monique Nsanzabaganwa, Deputy Chairperson of the African Union (AU) Commission

Your Excellency Foday Yumkella, Minister of Political and Public Affairs and Chairperson of Africa Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) Focal Points, Sierra Leon

Your Excellency, Ali El-Hefni, Member of APR Panel of Eminent Persons

Your Excellency Dr. Mansur Muhtar, Vice President, Country Programs Islamic Development Bank (IsDB)

Distinguished Heads of State and Government,

Honorable Ministers,

Excellencies,

Distinguished delegates,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is an honor to address this august gathering for the Second Africa High-Level Forum of South-South and Triangular Cooperation for Sustainable Development.

On behalf of the United Nations System in Uganda, I wish us all a Happy 2023. I thank the Government of Uganda for hosting this important forum, especially given this historic time.

The past three years have accentuated the need and potential for south-south and triangular cooperation. During this period, we have had to survive some of our biggest threats yet in the history of our nations and National Development Plans. Although we still worry about COVID-19, we are in a better place today than we were two years ago. But we still aren’t out of the woods. As the developing world continues to be at the wrong end of complex, interlinked crises and conflicts, we need to further strengthen South-South and Triangular cooperation.

As the world faces complex, interlinked crises and conflicts, many countries in the global South are still recovering from COVID-19 with vaccination rates still low and socio-economic impacts still being acutely felt. Countries are also dealing with a declining trend of development financing and foreign direct investment. 22 countries in Africa are now either in debt distress or at high risk of debt distress. The effects of climate change are now painfully more pronounced and pressures of inflation caused by the war in Europe are robbing us of gains made in sustainable development in the past decades.

Estimates show that 1.3 billion people in the global South were multidimensionally poor in 2019, and 556 million of whom lived in sub-Saharan Africa. As regards our own specific context, Africa is the youngest continent with more than 60% of its population under the age of 25. Unsurprisingly with such a young population, it also has the highest poverty headcount (35%) and unemployment rate (8%) globally. We still have the continent with the lowest internet penetration rate (29%) and the where more than half of the population go to sleep in darkness (without electricity).

What is needed is crystal clear: we urgently need to accelerate the pace of our development results to transform the situation of those living in one or more dimensions of poverty into a progressive reality, in which all individuals live in dignity as resilient members of peaceful and prosperous communities, societies and nations. Considering these times of tight fiscal spaces, it sounds like a lofty goal.

Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,

But of course, it can also be a realistic target too, if we trust and tap into our individual national and collective capabilities. We have great visions and many good plans at the national, continental, and global levels. We have strategies. Generally, we are making progress towards our development goals. The issue is the pace of progress as it is appears to be neither fast or broad enough to deal with the scale of the our challenges – particularly after the past 3 years.  Crucial in our deliberations at this conference therefore are questions of HOW? How can we accelerate progress? How can South South and Triangular Cooperation support and catalyze efforts across countries to deliver transformative responses to our common challenges?  

As never before, we do have tremendous opportunities to co-create sustainable solutions, to innovate for the kind of impact that will allow countries to leapfrog into a space where inequalities, injustice and insecurity could be confined to the history books.

We can build on successes of past projects and efforts that are ongoing. Innovation in the global South is engineering novel tools and partnerships in tackling issues around food insecurity, agriculture productivity and sustainability, health, infrastructure, and disaster risk management to name a few. Examples are many:

• Uganda, has benefitted from South South cooperation initiatives in sectors, including agriculture, education, health, infrastructure and science, technology, and innovation; and the country has extended capacity building and knowledge support to others in the areas of peace and security, including women’s leadership and participation in peace building, governance, energy and mineral development, migration issues, and humanitarian response for health and disaster risk management.
• In partnership between South Africa, Uganda and UNDP, ‘Karamoja Greenbelts’ initiative has been launched, the aim is to increase food security for people in Karamoja, a sub-region which witnessed the IPC Grade 3 food and nutrition emergency in 2022. This new initiative is anchored within the India-Brazil and South Africa framework, which is a good example of trilateral collaboration in support of reducing poverty and hunger.
• Following dramatic results achieved in agriculture production during first two phases of a South South cooperation with FAO and China, Uganda, a beneficiary country, is contributing substantial counterpart funding to the third phase of project, demonstrating its commitment to collaboration that aims to improve food and nutrition insecurity, income generation and decent job creation, especially for the youth and women, and to enhance livelihoods for small farmers.

Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is a privilege for me to be in Uganda, as a UN Resident Coordinator, at this point of time. Amidst turbulence in the region, Uganda has consistently played a key role in the peace and stabilization efforts, including by countering violent extremism and terrorism through the deployment of its forces in Somalia and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), calling upon and participating in the East African joint intervention in the Eastern DRC conflict. Uganda is a generous host to over 1.5 million refugees in the settlements; in 2022 alone, the country received close to 150,000 new people. Plenty of experience here to share with others in the global south.

And as we are just at the end of an impressive ebola response, Uganda should more deliberately offer its expertise in “Management of epidemics and disease outbreaks” and more deliberately support others in the Global South with this expertise. In a nutshell, there is a rich knowledge base – experience and lessons – to be shared among countries in the South to further their collective development.

On behalf of the UN System in Uganda, I wish to reiterate the UN’s continued support to Uganda and Members of the global South, in designing national, sub-regional and regional development solutions building on the wisdom and lessons, that have been acquired from South South cooperation initiatives. Several UN Agencies have developed specific strategies for promoting South South and triangular Cooperation and all five UN regional commissions have adopted it as core ways of working. At the country level, we have a UN Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework that guides UN Agencies to promote South South initiatives, mobilise resources and deliver implementation support. 

Our agencies, funds and programmes - FAO, IOM, ILO, UNDP, UN HABITAT, UNICEF, UN WOMEN and WFP are mobilizing partnerships for the project under the South South Cooperation and triangular framework. We do already have numerous partners, platforms, and solid policy instruments at the national, sub-regional, regional, and global levels.

A few examples include regional strategies and declarations for addressing food insecurity in the horn and in Sahel, for tackling climate change impact and strengthening disaster risk management, for enhancing early warning system, stability in the region, for addressing displacement and refugee situations, and for sustainable development of Africa. Matching bilateral and multilateral mechanisms for implementation too exist – East African Community, COMESA, SADC, African Union to name a few. We have even founded African Humanitarian Agency of the AU and established African humanitarian fund.

To go a little further, we have also localized these instruments through national plans, that inspire homegrown models. We also have upcoming homegrown models. For example, Uganda’s Parish Development Model has the potential to be an important vehicle for “creating wealth, employment and increasing household incomes”, and reducing household level income poverty. To realize and sustain wealth creation for impactful development, we will need to continuously nurture the right policy environment and governance structures through which opportunities for wealth creation will created and sustained. * A case in point is United States and Mexico - two very close neigbours but worlds apart. Their difference is the policy environment and governance structures.

Notwithstanding the enabling policy environment and governance structure in place, countries however, continue to largely suffer poor to non-implementation of promises made in several outcome documents of conferences, high-level events, and engagements – not to forget promises made in the national deliberations too.

Thus, today, I challenge us all, Honorable dignitaries, and Excellencies,

• First, to explore ways to make your implementation as robust as your promises, the HOW part of our vision and plans  while brainstorming in the sessions that will follow this Opening.  

• Second, to not only share impactful development results that you have achieved in your countries and communities, but to also discover innovative pathways for capitalizing those gains in support of lifting the 1.3 billion men and women, children and senior members, and the youth living in multidimensional poverty in the global South. (…as I mentioned earlier).

• Third, to identify genuine actions in support of regional interventions aimed at stabilization of the Great Lakes Regions and the Horn. This must be a ‘non-negotiable’ agenda as we all know that peace is an enabler of all forms of growth and integration.

• And my final ask is: to work on mobilizing large-scale South-South and triangular cooperation initiatives on an immediate basis, that can improve the condition of an unprecedented 283 million food insecure people in the global South, and that can help compensate for education loses (by COVID-19) by leveraging science, technology, innovation and technical and vocational education.

Thank You for your kind attention.

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