The eighth session of the Africa Regional Forum on Sustainable Development (ARFSD) was held in Kigali, Rwanda from 3rd to 5th March 2022, organised under the theme; “Building forward better: a green, inclusive and resilient Africa poised to achieve the 2030 Agenda and Agenda 2063”. The ARFSD was an action-oriented forum for member States and other stakeholders to explore and propose a set of concrete and workable solutions that will enable countries to rebuild from COVID-19. It had a sharp focus on at least 5 SDGs as the African continent struggles to look for a path that leads to green recovery. The Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA) has been engaging in the SDG dialogue for many years and our approach has always been that the SDGs and the Paris Agreement are blue prints that aim at a common goal, it is therefore crucial to integrate the two. Such integration can be very beneficial for building resilience comprehensively across societies while maintaining the autonomy of each. This can guarantee improved coherence of action in implementation and can also save money and time, enhance efficiency and further accelerate resilience building. However, the practice at national and global levels does not reflect this expectation. During the ARFSD and during the High-Level Political Panel (HLPF) in New York where the SDGs reporting are discussed and reported on respectively, the same expectation is not addressed. The Paris Agreement is rarely reported on as part of the SDGs, hence the two frameworks seem to work as parallel processes.
Against this backdrop, PACJA planned a number of workshops to contribute to the larger agenda of the 8th session of ARFSD and to advocate for the implementation of the SDGs alongside the Paris Agreement, particularly focusing on preparation for COP 27. The upcoming COP provides a strategic opportunity for PACJA to centre Africa’s needs and aspirations hence it is necessary to foster dialogue among critical stakeholders ahead of the COP in a bid to drive the African narrative. The planned workshops were a continuation of a series of dialogue meetings that PACJA initiated in 2021 aimed at preparing African stakeholders for the upcoming COP27 which will be held in Egypt later in the year. In December last year, PACJA hosted a roundtable in Cairo, Egypt for a diversity of stakeholders to review the outcomes of COP 26 and strategize for COP27. One of the main outcomes of the Cairo roundtable was the development of a draft strategy for COP 27 which was adopted with amendments. The meeting also yielded a platform that constituted a diversity of organisations, and was charged with the mandate of finalizing and driving the strategy. This was followed a by a two days’ workshop for the members of the platform at the sidelines of the 35th African Union Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on 4th and 5th February 2022, where the strategy was subjected to further discussion. Subsequently, PACJA presented the document to stakeholders for validation in a Pre-ARFSD event on 1st March in Kigali. This was followed by a capacity development workshop for major groups and other stakeholders in the Africa region.