The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has issued its annual Goalkeepers Report, which tracks progress on 18 SDG indicators and reflects on trends influencing the Goals. It notes that “[t]aken together, the data reminds us that progress is possible but not inevitable.”
In an introduction, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Co-Chairs highlight that progress on “most of our goals” would need to occur five times faster to achieve them by the 2030 deadline. And even this, they note, might be an underestimate, because the projections do not fully take into account the impacts of the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and the food crisis in Africa.
At the same time, the Co-Chairs stress that no data point fully reflects crisis, innovation, or the potential for human ingenuity, which “can render our careful projections irrelevant and make our boldest aspirations seem timid.” As an illustration, they highlight progress on slowing the spread of HIV achieved through hard work and innovation.
The report features two essays authored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Co-Chairs, which take a deep dive on gender equality and world hunger, calling for a change in the way we think about these issues. In an essay titled, ‘Gender equality depends on women having power, not just “empowerment,”’ Melinda French Gates argues that women’s power is the engine that drives progress on good health, quality education, and ending poverty, among other Goals.
In his essay, Bill Gates makes the case for why ‘We need to change how we think about world hunger,’ calling for innovation, not just donations.
The report includes “a set of contemporary estimates for how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected global progress on the SDGs.” Developed in cooperation with the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) and partners, the estimates are based on a process covering three periods:
- Period 1 (1990-2021), representing historical data;
- Period 2 (2020-2022), representing contemporary data spanning the three years of the pandemic, to assess how the disruptions have affected progress on the SDGs; and
- Period 3 (2023-2030), representing future predictions based on how economic growth and development progress have affected the indicators in the past.
The Goalkeepers Report’s 18 indicators cover: poverty (SDG 1); stunting and agriculture (SDG 2); maternal mortality, under-five mortality, neonatal mortality, HIV, tuberculosis, malaria, neglected tropical diseases, family planning, universal health coverage (UHC), smoking, and vaccines (SDG 3); education (SDG 4); gender equality (SDG 5); sanitation (SDG 6); and financial services for the poor (SDG 8). [Publication: The Future of Progress: Goalkeepers 2022] [Interactive Report]