23 Climate change —core to the African Development Bank’s strategy the impact of COVID-19 project that African economies will lose between $22.1 billion, in the base-case scenario, and $88.3 billion in the worst-case scenario, equivalent to a contraction of projected GDP growth for 2020 of between 0.7 and 2.8 percentage points (AfDB, 2020). Poverty and human development The UN SDGs form a comprehensive framework for assessing sustainable development progress. Analysis by SDGCA & SDSN (2019) shows that the progress towards the SDGs is mixed across the continent and major challenges remain. North Africa was shown to be the best performing region, with Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Cape Verde and (outlier) Mauritius making the most progress, whereas Central Africa was lagging furthest behind across the SDGs. Only one country, Algeria, is on track to achieve the zero poverty goal (SDG 1) and another six countries were making sufficient progress to be able to achieve it by 2030. Tackling existing and rising inequality is one of the key policy priorities for achieving SDG 1 and sustainable development. Although most African economies have experienced strong economic growth in the past decade, this has not resulted in equal opportunities for all. Even in countries with high GDP per capita, such as Botswana, Namibia, and South Africa, inequality remains stubbornly high. The Human Development Index (HDI), which measures average longterm progress for three building blocks of development — a long and healthy life, access to education, and a decent standard of living for all — is strongly correlated with GDP (PPP) per capita in most countries. Better health and education lead to higher productivity and GDP per capita, and a higher GDP can lead to higher-quality, more widely accessible services, including healthcare and education. The UN Human Development Report 2019 (which uses 2017 data; UNDP, 2019) shows that the HDI of the majority of African nations has steadily increased over the past decades, although with large variations in the pace of progress across the continent. Twenty-one countries (39%) have a medium or high HDI, while more than half of African countries are still classified as countries with low human development. Even in the highest-ranked countries in Africa, such as Seychelles, Tunisia, and Gabon, there is still considerable room for improvement when compared to the best performers globally. The COVID-19 crisis poses a real challenge to the achievement of SDG 1. The Climate change impact on cereal production in Africa by 2080 Source: UNEP, 2009 Change in potential cereal output, 2080 Decrease -50% or more Decrease 25–50% Decrease 5–25% No change ±5% Increase 5–25% Increase 25% Not suitable Under HadCM3 model, IPCC SRES A2 scenario
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