Q: When it was established over 77 years ago, the United Nations was created to stop wars. Look at the world today; it is full of violent conflicts from Ukraine to Ethiopia. Do you find it frustrating to work for the UN system in a world still at war?

Ahunna Eziakonwa:I do not find it frustrating to work for the UN system. I find it frustrating that we cannot always prevent the ugly consequences of war and the suffering and misery it creates for people. That frustrates me, and it keeps me up at night.

But I chose to work for the UN. It was a deliberate and intentional choice. There are many UN agencies; I work for the development arm of it. I think it is still the best chance that the world has to find a way to lay the foundations that help us to live in peace with each other. I have not found anything better.

When I am most tempted to doubt, and I guess I am fortunate in this sense, I am reminded of all the good work that I have seen and witnessed, all the lives that have been saved and improved, as well as all the dignity that has been established. I am reminded of my colleagues who have given their lives for this work.

Q: When is your moment of doubt? What would that be?  

It is often when multilateralism seems to be disintegrating; global solidarity and collective responsibility to protect and keep people safe and dignified seem to dwindle. We have seen that in the last few years. Multilateralism has always been presented as a solution, and it has worked at critical times in history with nations coming together to make a difference and the world better. But it was never perfect. It needed a facelift and a remake.

I still believe that an organisation like the UN can help remake that.

Q: Despite the growing global challenges, multilateralism appears to have lost its appeal. The unipolar world is giving way to the multipolar world, where countries fight over non-issues because they want to test and undermine each other. How much does this affect you as a development person working for the UNDP and the UNDP-Africa?

In a perfect world, we would want the elite with the power to agree on several things that we ought to do. After all, they did agree on the sustainable development goals in 2015. They touch on governance and justice, which are complex issues. They even touch on the most contentious issues of climate and nature-based solutions. This, no one believed, for it remains a divisive issue.

It is deep and far-reaching, making me proud to be a UN official. We have the framework to unify around the kind of world we want to see; one that is peaceful, prosperous for all, and with the potential to save the planet. It is about people, the planet and prosperity. We have got less than 10 years to achieve it.

The world has been hit by several tsunamis in the last few years, retarding the progress we saw on the development side. We have had COVID, which was a slap in the face. We now have a war in Ukraine. Then, of course, the huge impact of climate change led to a setback.

In the last two years, we have seen a consistent downward trend in the human development index, where poverty levels were back to 2016. We have much catching up to do, which is why modern capitalism must be rethought, reshaped and strengthened. More than ever before, we will need each other in this world.

Q: The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were more focused than the SDGs. One of the criticisms directed at the UNDP, in particular, is that it is not focused because it is trying to deal with almost everything under the sky. Do you accept this as fair criticism? What would you want the UNDP to focus on, particularly in Africa?

I chose to work for the UNDP because it does not just try to do one thing. Human development is not just about a single variable; it is not just about health, education or water. It is the whole chain and multi-dimensional, which the UNDP specialises in trying to understand. That is the UNDP brand that I find personally attractive.

Q: Are you not limited by your financial or other resources that you cannot do everything on your own?

We are a UN agency, and our funding comes primarily from member states of developed and developing countries. Our program countries contribute immensely to their own development, although we do not give that much credit to them. Ethiopia has contributed 22 million dollars to peace work, for instance. That could grow when you start to have your value proposition, and the government sees where they could get more mileage through a UNDP channel than their own systems.

I will give you an example.

In Senegal, the government wanted to close the development deficit in remote areas where extending services had been difficult. They gave 200 million dollars to the UNDP to help accelerate development within two years. We did the work and impacted places not touched by development. The government asked us to cover 54 territories without development for years because their capacity and systems were not yet there.

We did this within two years; then, the government took over a second phase. The Senegalese systems have now been strengthened. They have seen the model, adopted it, and are doing it themselves.

Q: Your priority is ending poverty. Do you believe poverty is an individual responsibility? Or is it a structural burden society imposes on individuals?

I always think poverty is a mindset issue. This continent has no business being poor; it has more natural resources than some countries giving it money. We have this predominant effect of either colonialism or whatever tells you that you cannot.

We still have unfair governance systems at the global level regarding trade and the valuation of African products. We still have very unfavourable conditions, with African countries borrowing six and seven times more than other countries, particularly in the rich world. When you start to break it down, the reason for this is that Africa has a perception issue. The risk rating of the continent is very high despite returns on investment being much higher in Africa than in many places. When Africa borrows, it becomes a debt trap because the amount of money put forward to service that debt is off the charts.

Africa’s ability to industrialise and add value to its natural resources is not so much because it does not have the scholarship to put the systems and machinery in place for this to happen. There is a global structural fault line where Africa is designed to service economies in the rich world in terms of raw materials. We have never overcome this. We are at a point where the world got so used to tap-in raw materials from Africa that it would not stand for Africa adding value to its products.

These systems must change. There must be more justice in how the world is configured at the economic, political and social levels.

Q: Are you calling for a reform of the existing global order? To what?

I am not the first to say it. There is a consciousness that the system is not designed to favour poor countries and complete poverty eradication. It needs to be looked at. The elephant in the room must be addressed somehow if we will get there.

Q: For all your existence as the UNDP, the resources you mobilise, and the work that you have put in through the years, there has been a series of setbacks recently. Things are sliding back. The UN Global Humanitarian reports that 110 million people in sub-Saharan Africa were under emergency humanitarian food assistance last year. There have been post-pandemic setbacks in education, health, and food security. Do you think the UN in general and the UNDP are perhaps too old and too traditional to deal with these issues to reverse course for the better? Is it that maybe these are institutions that have stayed too long and are out of touch, and maybe new global institutions must exist?

I do not want to lean towards the traditional and protective mandate. I believe in change, the evolution of things, innovation, creativity, and adapting to new realities. What made me apply for the post at the UNDP was when I saw our Administrator lay out his vision for the organisation, putting innovation at the centre. We need to innovate as an organisation to become future-smart. I continued to stay with the UNDP because it is always refreshed. We have so much room to reinvent ourselves, which is what we are doing.

We never dealt with financing, for instance. We were a fund in our creation; we now know that funding as a concept is outdated. When you look at the bill for the SDGs, it is not about official development assistance anymore; it is about financing. And the UNDP established a finance sector hub, although it is not a financial institution like the World Bank or the AfDB. We are still a development services agency. But we know the critical importance of financing the fiscal space for fostering development. We want to understand and build it into our DNA. And this has happened just in the last few years. The same thing happened with climate; again, a new disposition of the organisation.

Q: But what have you got to show for all that?

We have UNDP offices accompanying countries to look at innovative and impact financing. We are mobilising bonds, helping countries understand the issues on, for instance, how to get around the impact of debt on development financing. We are leading on what we call an integrated financing framework of countries.

Q: But these are policy issues.    

They are not policy; they are delivering results. There is a false narrative that development financing must always come from outside. In the past, we focused a lot on aid. Now we know that aid is important only up to a point. We must enable countries to gaze beyond aid into their financial capacities and capabilities. When COVID happened, and every country went into its own shells, that was when many African countries realised the resources they had and the fiscal space they could mobilise.

Even with all the depressing things happening in the world, and when I am most tempted to doubt, what boosts me is the privileged position of covering 46 countries. I go to these countries and observe what our teams are doing. I do not just listen to the team. I listen to the clients. I think the attractiveness for them is that we are accompanying them; we are not taking over. We are building capacities and agencies.