Integrated SDG Insights
Cameroon
UNDP’s Integrated SDG Insights explore how to achieve the SDGs by 2030. So that no one is left behind.
How To Read This Report
‘SDG Insights’ playbooks transcend development “as usual,” and leverages data innovation, AI and systems analysis to chart credible pathways that help countries meet the 2030 Agenda.
SDG Moment — This section provides an overview of a country's economic growth trajectory, with new insights on sustainability and inclusiveness of growth pathways.
SDG Trends & Priorities — This section builds from the foundation of national SDG progress and uses machine learning to analyse national development ambition with an SDG lens.
SDG Interlinkages — Combined, these insights are mapped against SDG interlinkages to define policy choices the accelerate SDG progress, tailored to national context.
Finance & Stimulus — These policy choices are made against fiscal constraints and opportunities for stimulus mapped in this section to ensure choices translate to development impact and leave no one behind.
1. SDG Moment
While economic growth is a key element in achieving the SDGs, many countries are intent on moving beyond growth as a yardstick for progress. In the short run, growth enables the SDGs; but in the long run, the SDGs aim to transform the pattern of growth itself.
GDP Growth Pathways
People
Poverty: Percentage of the population under each threshold (PPP$ a day).
Data not available.
Planet
Carbon Intensity: CO2 emissions intensity of GDP (tCO2 per PPP $1,000).
Cameroon’s economy during 2023-2025 cycle is in coping phase, characterized by growth rates projected to be 49% higher, on average, than the global figure, but well below the country’s growth trajectory forecast before the pandemic.
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This pace of growth, however, is not expected to exert a noticeable effect on lowering the incidence of poverty at $2.15 and $3.65 a day. Hence, the country’s commitments to achieving the SDGs are focused on increasing people’s well-being and on overcoming this lack of progress. Economic expansion, on the other hand, would not be increasingly dependent on carbon emissions as the country’s fossil carbon emissions intensity of GDP would remain unchanged, and it would follow a downward trend at an annual rate of decline of almost 7% when also considering land-use change.
2. SDG Trends & Priorities
Trends
Understanding how
Cameroon
performs against the SDG targets provides a baseline landscape against which to build integrated SDG pathways. SDG progress tracking follows UN Stats standards and methodology, and is aligned with country profiles.
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Priorities
Cameroon
’s national priorities are analysed using machine learning to reveal the most prominent SDGs referenced in national policy documents. This analysis uses a custom-built model for SDG classification. It considers 100k+ terms, including phrases and expressions.
3. SDG Interlinkages
Maps synergies and trade-offs of national priorities to the most relevant SDG targets to chart policy pathways with most potential to accelerate progress.
8.5: By 2030, achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all women and men, including for young people and persons with disabilities, and equal pay for work of equal value.
The promotion of employment and economic integration is one of the four pillars of the Cameroon National Development Strategy 2020-203. The overall objective is to promote full and decent employment through the expansion and enhancement of job creation opportunities.
This development policy hinges on five courses of action: (i) promoting employment in public investment projects; (ii) improving productivity, employment and incomes in rural areas; (iii) promoting migration from the informal to the formal sector; (iv) encouraging job creation and preservation in large enterprises in the formal private sector; (v) matching training to employment and improving the vocational integration system; and (vi) regulating the labour market.
As in many countries across Africa, the challenge is not a lack of policies, but the absence of a mechanism that regularly tracks the number of jobs being created. Regular tracking enables the nation to know whether it is winning, to celebrate such a victory and, where needed, to take corrective action. Cameroon may consider this as a key ingredient in its post-summit actions.
9.2: Promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and, by 2030, significantly raise industry’s share of employment and gross domestic product, in line with national circumstances, and double its share in least developed countries.
Cameroon’s vision is to be in the ranks of Newly Industrialized Countries in 2035, and therefore its sectoral strategies are structured around the development of industries and services, in line with the Industrialization Master Plan. The idea is to make Cameroon the switch (electricity supplier), the feeder (supplier of agro-industrial produce) and the equipment manufacturer (supplier of capital goods, including furniture) of the Economic Community of Central African States and Nigeria.
As with jobs, a mechanism to track progress is important to ensure the right incentives are put in place.
The good news is that the economic expansion would not be increasingly dependent on reducing carbon emissions. It is important that Cameroon considers this as an opportunity to sustain its green credentials to increase and attract green investments.
16.6: Develop effective, accountable and transparent institutions at all levels
Improvement in the state of public services is a key objective of Cameroon. The nation has articulated a number of priority actions, which include modernizing public administration, improving public service functioning and human resources, and fighting corruption.
In view of Cameroon’s ambition of becoming an emerging, democratic and country, one united in diversity, two additional actions are needed to have transformative public services: defining and delivering a package of public services across multiple sectors and regularly tracking their responsiveness.
When the results of such tracking mechanisms are used for learning and accountability, this will further drive progress. In addition, Cameroon may want to consider leveraging the penetration of cell phones to undertake a regular survey among its citizens regarding their public service experience.
15.1: By 2020, ensure the conservation, restoration and sustainableuse of terrestrial and inland freshwater ecosystems and their services.
By prioritizing Target 15.1 in its 2021-2025 National Development Plan, Ecuadorreaffirmed the significance of protecting and preserving terrestrial ecosystems andtheir biodiversity. This includes recognizing that the investment projects intendedto fulfil Target 15.1 will not only contribute to achieving the SDGs 13, 14 and 15, butwill also help restore ecosystems that underpin the availability and comprehensivemanagement of water resources (SDG 6) and promote their sustainable use (Target12.2). Additionally, it will also foster the generation of new energy from renewablesources (Target 7.2).
To this end, Ecuador seeks to strengthen the management of the National Systemof Protected Areas through its 2022-2032 Strategic Plan and the implementationof the National Forest Restoration Plan 2019-2030. These instruments serve as thetechnical, legal and financial foundation for executing local forest restorationprocesses with a landscape vision, with an overall goal of covering 30,000hectares through its projects. Considering that the proportion of national territoryunder conservation or environmental management, as of 2022, stands at 22.1%, itis necessary to mobilize additional financial resources from various sources andestablish robust governance (Target 17.3) to intensify the care of protected areas.This ensures the conservation of natural and cultural resources, genetic flows, theprovision of environmental services for the benefit of the population and thealignment of policies on the ground.
Futures Scenarios
SDG Push is a futures scenario based on 48 integrated accelerators in the areas of Governance, Social Protection, Green Economy and Digital Disruption. It uses national data to explore the impact on human development by 2030 and 2050 across key SDG indicators. It does this by using ‘International Futures,’ a systems model designed to explore interactions across development systems.
Poverty <$1.90 Per Day (Number of People)
Malnourished Children Under 5 (Number Of Children)
Malnourished Children Under 5 (Number Of Children)
4. Finance and Stimulus
Many countries are facing reduced fiscal space, high debt levels, rising interest rates and downgrades on credit ratings. Fiscal and financial constraints tend to slow or even reverse SDG progress.
Cameroon's gross government debt, projected at 42.8% of GDP in 2023, is 5.5 percentage points (pp) below the low-income developing countries (LIDC) average of 48.3%. The country is expected to collect 15.5% of GDP in revenue this year, thus slightly above the LIDC group ratio of 14.9%, with natural resources accounting for an above-LIDC average share of 15.3% of this revenue.
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Cameroon's public external debt servicing this year is expected to be as high as 20.3% of revenue compared to 14.1% for the LIDC average. The country’s credit rating – as is the LIDC average – is in the ‘highly speculative’ category. According to its latest World Bank and IMF DSA, Cameroon is rated as in ‘high risk of debt distress’. Cameroon is using an Integrated National Financing Framework to address key fiscal and financial constraints and to build a more sustainable financial architecture at the national level. Priority actions include strengthening domestic revenue mobilization and tax administration via improving the e-monitoring of invoices and the turnover of companies and tax collection; strengthening environmental taxation and local tax reform for optimal financing of decentralization; addressing debt by making use of regular and reliable debt service forecasts and a public securities issuance plan; promoting investment via the creation of a single development bank covering various windows of support (including SMEs, agriculture, housing and guarantee funds) and via legal and regulatory reforms; and developing a Climate Investment Plan to establish a strategic portfolio of concrete and bankable projects to mobilize climate finance.
SDG Stimulus
The UN Secretary General’s SDG Stimulus Plan lays out a blueprint for action within the existing financial architecture. It includes:
- Providing liquidity to support recovery in the near term
- Enhance debt relief for vulnerable countries.
- Expanding development financing by MDBs
- Align financial flows with the SDGs and Paris Agreement, according to country-level priorities and needs, for example through the rollout of the UN Integrated National Financing Framework (INFFs).
Given the projected fiscal and financial constraints faced by
Cameroon
possible funding options for the investments derived from the identified interlinkages are as follows:
- Tax and revenue reform
- Debt for SDGs
- Climate finance
- Blended and public-private finance
- SDG-aligned business environment and investment
- Accessing financial markets and insurance
- Remittances, philanthropy and faith-based financing
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Methodology & Data Sources
Click here to view the Methodological Note for the Integrated SDG Insights.
This report is the result of a global exercise carried out using artificial intelligence to identify SDG priorities based on 10 national government documents, together with SDG progress and SDG interlinkage analysis. The implementation and monitoring of the 2030 Agenda in Argentina should be consulted in the Country Reports and National Voluntary Reports.
SDG Moment
Methodology
Assesses challenges and opportunities in national growth trajectories with insights on environmental sustainability and inclusiveness.
Data Sources
Future trajectories to 2025 are based on IMF-WEO GDP projections, distributions of per capita income or consumption from the World Bank, and CO2 emissions from the Global Carbon Budget 2022 and EDGAR (JRC and IEA).
Trends & Priorities
Methodology
SDG trends tracks progress from 2015 to date for the 231 indicators. National priorities are analysed using machine learning to reveal the most prominent SDGs referenced in national policy documents.
Data Sources
SDG trends tracks progress from 2015 to date for the 231 indicators. National priorities are analysed using machine learning to reveal the most prominent SDGs referenced in national policy documents.
Interlinkages
Methodology
SDG trends tracks progress from 2015 to date for the 231 indicators. National priorities are analysed using machine learning to reveal the most prominent SDGs referenced in national policy documents.
Data Sources
The exercise globally considered a total of 454 documents published from 2015 to August 2022. (Miola et al., 2019 updated in 2021-2022)
Finance & Stimulus
Methodology
Provides insight into indicators of fiscal and financial stress with options (INFF) for stimulus and other means to accelerate progress.
Data Sources
Most recent resource data from UNU-WIDER GRD (between 2018 and 2021), debt and revenue from IMF WEO (between 2020 and forecasts for 2023), external debt from IDS (2023), yields from Haver Analytics (8 June 2023), credit ratings from S&P, Moodys and FITCH (2023), and DSA ratings from World Bank/IMF (31 May 2023).