Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure

As developing countries pursue infrastructure projects, they should aim to address a combination of the pandemic, climate, inequality, and other crises with the right mix of economic and social infrastructure. To do this, governments must invest in a national infrastructure planning process, align planning with the SDGs, and prioritize sustainable infrastructure over infrastructure that does not put people and the planet first. There is no silver bullet for all the challenges; however, incremental changes based on innovative precedents can potentially make a difference on the ground. This paper proposes an analytical framework to consider these challenges and concludes with possible solutions.

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals are dangerously off track. The prevailing “gap-filling” approach to SDG financing has proven inadequate, failing to deliver the scale, impact or equity required. Global efforts remain fixated on mobilizing additional financing rather than embedding the SDGs at the core of economic and financial systems. Blended finance, often heralded as a silver bullet, has fallen short: public resources dominate blended deals, often de-risking private initiative in lower-risk, lower-impact projects. To redirect this trajectory, the international financing architecture must be reshaped around the SDGs. First, the SDGs must be placed at the centre of economic planning, supported by robust public investment pipelines. These pipelines enable the public sector to guide and strategically mobilize private investment toward high-impact, mission-driven projects. Second, SDG-anchored conditionalities should be embedded across public-private ventures to ensure concessional public finance actively steers investments, rather than merely subsidizing private returns. Third, mechanisms to socialize risks and rewards must be introduced, reinvesting returns to scale transformative SDG financing. Finally, while mobilizing additional financing remains critical, an equally pressing challenge lies in effectively utilizing significant public funds already available in budgets and development bank balance sheets.

As the world races towards 2025, the midpoint of the last decade of SDG action, the need for swift identification of actionable strategies becomes an imperative for policymakers. With a focus on Malawi, a country grappling with uneven SDG progress, this policy brief highlights the pivotal role of human capital development (HCD) in areas such as health, education, skill building and infrastructure development in the attainment of the SDGs. Based on a set of simulations, the brief underscores the transformative impact of an integrated HCD approach, whereby policy design, planning and programme implementation converge to unlock the potential of human capital as a driver of sustainable development. This analysis builds on the ‘Human Capital Push Scenario’ employed by using the International Futures (IFs) model.

The Arab region is facing significant challenges in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, with progress towards gender equality being particularly slow and uneven. Despite a doubling of data availability, substantial gaps persist in various areas. The present statistical brief provides a snapshot of gender disparities across various sectors, and presents data-driven insights for policymakers, researchers and advocates. The key topics covered include women in politics, finance, education, employment, child marriage, and violence against women. The statistical brief underscores both the progress achieved and the critical need for further efforts to accelerate change.