Impact of COVID19 on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): Early Signs in Uganda.

Impact of COVID19 on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): Early Signs in Uganda.

It was refreshing to read the call to action made by Her Excellency Erna Solberg (Prime Minister of Norway) and His Excellency Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo (President of the Republic of Ghana) who are both Co-chair of the UN Secretary-General’s SDG Advocates on the need to accelerate and deepen global efforts during this Decade of Action to ‘recover better’, and build a healthier, safer, fairer and a more prosperous world especially in the post-Covid19 era. https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2020/04/coronavirus-sdgs-more-relevant-than-ever-before/

The insights offered in the above blog largely resonate with many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa like Uganda. Owing to the Covid19 pandemic, Uganda has revised down its GDP growth to 3.8% for the financial year 2019/2020 from the pre-pandemic figure of 6%., according to the Ministry of Finance's Performance of the Economy Report for March 2020. This comes on the back-drop of a month long lock-down, curfews, travel restrictions and closed borders (except for trade cargo and merchandise).

Prime Minister Erna and President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo in their article talk of prevalence of poverty, weak health systems and lack of cooperation which we have seen manifest at regional level here in East Africa. Whereas the East African Community countries namely Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda imposed lock-down and travel restrictions, Tanzania the second largest economy in the East African region did not take similar stringent measures in its fight against Covid19 pandemic. Tanzania now accounts for more than half of Covid19 cases in the region.  Of Uganda’s 83 confirmed cases since March 2020, 25 of these are cargo transporters from Kenya and Tanzania. This indeed clearly calls for the shared and integrated efforts as proposed by the Prime Minister Erna and President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo. We cannot fight the pandemic in isolation.

Prime Minister Erna and President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo also highlight the aspect of countries having to reset their priorities, and reallocate resources to deal with the pandemic. Uganda’s government allocated a supplementary budget of Ugx 284 billion ($75million) towards fighting the pandemic in March 2020. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-01/uganda-seeks-75-million-in-supplementary-budget-on-covid-19 .The emergency budget funding was allocated to largely the Health sector to fight covid19 and also to the Security and Local Administration sectors to implement lock-down restrictions and other administrative activities in the fight against Covid19 at local government level.

In the absence of a pandemic, these resources would have gone to much need development expenditures in the education and health sectors. The emergency/ supplementary funding accounts for more than 10% of the Uganda’s health budget for the Financial year 2019/2020. This has both short term and medium term impacts on our fiscal position and also implementation of key initiatives towards the SDGs. Additionally, the slowdown in the economy shall affect the country as it implements infrastructure projects in the energy and transport sector that are crucial for SDG7 (Affordable and Clean Energy) and SDG9 (Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure).  

In the subsequent periods, it shall be evident the extent and scale of impact of Covid19 pandemic on renewable energy projects that are largely financed by private capital and or through multilateral cooperation frameworks. There are potential delays on attaining financial close for some of these energy projects and also potential project risks associated with extensions of time and additional costs. This is bound to affect attainment of targets under the SDG7 (Affordable and Clean Energy) in Uganda in the short and medium term.

Uganda has also faced a unique triple challenge along with the Covid19 pandemic. It has also been hit by locust invasion in February 2020 and floods/ heavy rainfall largely attributable to climate change. The rainy season has been longer and the rains have been more intense thus rising water levels in the Lake Victoria Basin that have affected major infrastructure like dams, hydropower plants and bridges. The floods and heavy rains have also affected local communities posing risk on hygiene and sanitation. The locusts have destabilized food security and the livelihood of communities mainly in the East and North of Uganda. These three (Covid19 pandemic, locusts and floods) shall have a negative impact on attainment of a wide range of Sustainable Development Goals including but not limited to SDG1 (No Poverty) and SDG2(Zero Hunger) in the short and medium term. 

Thus the call made by Prime Minister Erna and President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to fight against poverty, hunger and climate change is indeed timely and resonates with countries like Uganda in the post-Covid19 agenda. We hope the UN Secretary-General’s SDG Advocates shall continue to rally players across the board to take bold actions on implementing the SDGs as part of the recovery of the global economy and towards a safer, fairer and more prosperous world.

Author:

Nicholas Agaba Rugaba (REng)

Civil Engineer and Renewable Energy Professional (Dams and Hydro Power), Uganda.

Twitter: @RugabaAgaba

Co-Author.

Ruth Ashley Nansubuga

Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist