Technician repairing control panel. Mickael Ange Konan/pexels.comù Credit: United Nations
 
The United Nations General Assembly’s proclamation of the Fourth Industrial Development Decade for Africa (IDDA IV) is far more than a symbolic milestone.

By Fatou Haidara and Francisca Tatchouop Belobe
VIENNA / ADDIS ABABA, Jul 6 2026 (IPS)

Amid shifting geopolitical, economic, and technological landscapes, it reflects growing international recognition that Africa’s sustainable industrial transformation is vital – not only for the continent’s future, but also for global prosperity.

Backed by more than 140 co-sponsors and endorsed by 176 Member States, as well as the African Union Executive Council, IDDA IV is the most politically anchored Decade yet. This is especially significant at a time when international development cooperation and multilateralism are under strain.

The proclamation underscores that industrialization is crucial to Africa’s productive transformation, economic diversification, decent job creation, poverty reduction, and long-term growth. It also calls on the international community to support Africa’s industrialization efforts as a contribution to the realization of Agenda 2063.

Building on its predecessor, IDDA IV sets an integrated transformation agenda, which aligns Africa’s structural realities to the opportunities and challenges of a rapidly evolving global economy.

The Third Industrial Development Decade elevated Africa’s industrialization on the global political agenda, mobilized over 700 joint initiatives with development partners and financial institutions, and strengthened industrial policy support across African Member States.

These achievements are a strong foundation to build on. Yet significant structural barriers – infrastructure and energy deficits, limited productive capacity, low technology absorption, and insufficient access to finance – still need to be addressed.

Africa enters the Fourth Industrial Development Decade against a backdrop of volatility and change, but also unprecedented opportunities.

Opportunities

Despite recurring global and regional shocks, the continent has remained resilient. The African Development Bank’s 2026 Economic Outlook notes that real GDP growth reached 4.4 per cent in 2025, making Africa among the fastest growing regions of the world.

With nearly 12 million young people entering the labour force each year, Africa’s youthful population is a major driver of its future prosperity.

At the same time, global supply chains are being reconfigured, and the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is creating the world’s largest emerging integrated market, opening the door to regional trade integration, value chains and economies of scale.

Digital technologies are reshaping manufacturing systems worldwide, providing Africa with an opportunity to leapfrog traditional industrial pathways. The digital transition is driving innovation in agro-processing and climate-smart agricultural technologies. It is also fueling global demand for critical minerals, which resource-endowed African countries can leverage by building local value addition.

In parallel, Africa’s growing middle class, urbanization and shifting consumer preferences are expanding markets, from processed foods to pharmaceuticals. Continuing regional integration under the AfCFTA is further adding momentum.

The convergence of these trends creates a historic window of opportunity for Africa, which may not return in the same form.

With IDDA IV proclaimed, the mandate is set; the urgent task now is delivery.

The African Union Commission (AUC) and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) are committed to steering this process together as the two institutions entrusted by the UN General Assembly to lead the Decade’s implementation.

The immediate priority for the next 18 months is to develop a collaborative Programme of Action. This framework will translate the Decade’s mandate into targeted investments, secure financing platforms, and measurable results across national and regional corridors.

IDDA IV is not standalone. It aligns with major continental frameworks and initiatives, including the AfCFTA, the Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa (PIDA), and the New African Financial Architecture for Development (NAFAD), while convening the different actors needed to advance Africa’s industrialization.

UNIDO, as the UN’s specialized agency for industrial development, brings technical and policy expertise, field presence, and proven operational models to implement IDDA IV on the ground, including through its Programmes for Country Partnership.

The AUC, with its continent wide political mandate and strong coordination capacity, can align trade, infrastructure, finance, and industry to drive delivery.

This effort will be coordinated with the African Union Development Agency – Partnership for Africa’s Development (AUDA -NEPAD), the Economic Commission for Africa, the African Development Bank Group, Afreximbank, regional economic communities, development partners, and private sector stakeholders.

However, to succeed, IDDA IV needs adequate and sustained financing. It requires building an industrial investment ecosystem and making private sector engagement a core pillar of delivery.

Governments and international organizations can create an enabling environment, coordinate partnerships and support policy reforms. But it is the private sector that builds factories, creates jobs, and links economies to regional and global value chains.

The next phase will therefore focus on mobilizing public and private capital, structuring bankable projects capable of attracting institutional investors, and using blended finance mechanisms to de-risk investments in emerging markets.

IDDA IV is not merely another international decade. It is the opportunity to redefine Africa’s role in the global economy, shifting from raw material exporter to a producer of value-added goods, and a driver of industrial innovation and sustainable growth.

Ms. Fatou Haidara is UNIDO’s Deputy to the Director General and Managing Director of the Directorate of Global Partnerships and External Relations, while Ms. Francisca Tatchouop Belobe is the AUC’s Commissioner for Economic Development, Trade, Tourism, Industry, and Minerals.

Source: Africa Renewal, United Nations

IPS UN Bureau

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Nurses greet visitors at a clinic set up at a hospital in Thailand to treat people with suspected COVID-19 symptoms. Credit: WHO/P. Phutpheng

By Fatou Haidara and Helen McEachern
VIENNA/LONDON, Jun 8 2021 (IPS)

The leaders of the G7 group of nations will soon gather in Cornwall, United Kingdom, (June 11-13) to devise plans to ‘build back better’ from the COVID-19 pandemic. The summit takes place in the wake of a crisis that has both revealed and further exacerbated existing economic and social inequalities, including gender inequalities.

This meeting and the run-up to the United Nations Climate Conference (COP26) in November 2021 provide an opportunity to put women front and centre of global economic plans.

This crisis should be used as a wake-up call to evolve from business-as-usual. It is time for governments and the international community to embrace measures to level the playing field for women entrepreneurs and ensure their knowledge, experience and great untapped potential are at the forefront of national economic recovery plans, including for sustainable, green and inclusive economies and societies.

Impact of COVID-19 on women entrepreneurs

For women entrepreneurs, the pandemic has meant reduced incomes, temporary and permanent business closures, the dismissal of employees, missed business opportunities and reduced access to often already limited finance and capital.

Women-owned enterprises are overrepresented in sectors most vulnerable to the detrimental impacts of COVID-19 – such as retail, hospitality and tourism, and services, as well as manufacturing such as in the textile industry.

With children being homeschooled and heightened care needs for older people, there is also an increasing amount of unpaid care work which is disproportionately carried out by women. (Even before the pandemic, most women-owned businesses were on average smaller and had less capital than those owned by men – which results in limited resilience to the economic hit created by the pandemic.)

Data analyzed by the COVID-19 Gender and Development Initiative suggests that in every region of the world women are more likely to have been forced to close their businesses because of the pandemic.

Recent research by the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women, based on responses from 125 women entrepreneurs in 32 low- and middle-income countries, provides critical insights into women entrepreneurs’ experiences and challenges in 2020.

Most women entrepreneurs responding to the survey reported that the pandemic has had a negative impact on their businesses, and nearly four in ten responded that their business may have to close as a result.

Over a third of these women reported they would struggle to afford necessities like food if their business closed down, and almost half of them reported that they have lost out on formal financial investment opportunities due to the pandemic.

With regard to the type of support required, a UNIDO survey¹ on the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on women and youth entrepreneurs in the manufacturing sector and manufacturing-related services recorded responses of more than 1100 entrepreneurs (759 of them women) from 34 countries.

It showed that access to finance, customer retention, market diversification and product development are the areas where women entrepreneurs need the most assistance to recover from the economic repercussions of the pandemic. Also, women entrepreneurs indicated more need for support than men entrepreneurs, again suggesting that the pandemic has had a disproportionately negative impact.

Investing in women entrepreneurs critical

The playing field for women entrepreneurs already needed levelling before the pandemic. The World Bank’s Women, Business and the Law 2021 report shows that laws and restrictions continue to prevent women from entering the workforce and starting businesses.

Around the world, women still have only three-quarters of the legal rights afforded to men on average.² Women entrepreneurs are also less likely to have access to human, financial and social capital, and globally, only one in three businesses are owned by women.³

In addition, women are less likely than men to start and operate a business, both in OECD⁴ and low- and middle-income countries⁵.

While investing in women entrepreneurs is first and foremost a critical issue of economic justice and women’s rights, there is also a strong economic incentive. Joint research by the Boston Consulting Group and the Cherie Blair Foundation from 2019 found that if women and men participated equally as entrepreneurs, global GDP could rise by 3-6%, boosting the global economy by USD 2.5-5 trillion.

Unlocking the untapped potential of women entrepreneurs to boost the world economy should therefore be a priority in the post-pandemic recovery.

Time to step up commitments to support women entrepreneurs

Gender-neutral macroeconomic policies and recovery packages will not reach those most in need. In fact, they continue to reinforce existing gender inequalities and contribute to the discrimination against women in economic participation and entrepreneurship. This will leave women – and their families, communities and wider societies – worse off.

Since the Leaders Declaration of the G7 Summit of 7-8 June 2015 identified women’s entrepreneurship as a key driver of innovation, growth and jobs, and respective commitments were formulated in the G7 Roadmap for a Gender-Responsive Economic Environment in 2017, successive G7 Presidencies have continued to advance this cause.

The meeting in Cornwall is an opportune moment to further strengthen these commitments and adopt concrete measures for a green economic recovery that empowers women and benefits all. Both national policies and international cooperation should prioritize building more gender-responsive, just and resilient economies, with policies and fiscal packages that address deeply-ingrained inequalities.

In particular, we call on leaders at the upcoming G7 Summit to ensure that post-COVID-19 recovery efforts and fiscal packages support sectors where women are strongly represented and that have been hit hard by the pandemic, such as hospitality and tourism, manufacturing, retail, health and social care. We need concrete budgetary commitments. In addition, measures need to be put in place so that women entrepreneurs have equal access to market opportunities, such as through public procurement, as well as access to finance.

Yet, even these actions will not be enough if structural inequalities persist and discriminatory social norms and legal barriers are not tackled through transformative policies. There is a further need to ensure more gender-targeted and universal social protection mechanisms which are missing in so many countries around the world, and to ensure that macroeconomic policies recognize and address the gender inequalities in unpaid care and other domestic responsibilities.

It is also essential that the voices of women entrepreneurs and their organizations are heard by the international community, including the G7, and that women entrepreneurs are involved in any policy negotiations seeking to ‘build back better’.

Today, women make up only 24% of governmental COVID-19 task forces globally,⁶ thus creating the risk of perpetuating gender inequalities and leaving women’s needs unattended.⁷

The international community faces a unique opportunity to shape a post-COVID-19 economy to which women and men have equal access and can equally contribute to through their businesses. Our organizations stand ready to collaborate on this endeavour.

¹ UNIDO, “Assessment of the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on women and youth entrepreneurs in the manufacturing sector and manufacturing-related services”, 2020.
² World Bank ‘Women, Business and the Law 2021’, 2021
³ World Bank Enterprise Surveys. Retrieved from The World Bank Gender Data Portal: Share of small, medium, and large firms with a woman among the principal owners (%), latest data available for 2019
⁴ OECD (2019). The Missing Entrepreneurs 2019 – Policies for Inclusive Entrepreneurship.
⁵ World Bank Enterprise Surveys, World Bank Data Portal, as presented in the World Bank Blog of Daniel Halim (5 March 2020): Women entrepreneurs needed—stat!
⁶ “COVID-19 Global Gender Response Tracker”, UNDP
⁷ Further reading: “Vienna Discussion Forum 2020 – The future is gender-inclusive: Global responses in crisis management and recovery”, 27 November 2020, UNIDO.

Fatou Haidara is Managing Director, Directorate of Corporate Management and Operations, United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO); Helen McEachern is Chief Executive Officer, Cherie Blair Foundation for Women

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