Abstract

Abstract
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity by 2030. These goals are interconnected and are designed to balance social, economic, and environmental sustainability. While all 17 SDGs are important, there are five key areas often considered transformative due to their broad impact across multiple goals. These areas are including People, Planet, Prosperity, Peace, and Partnership. These five areas highlight the holistic and interconnected nature of the SDGs.
With the increasing number of composite indicators as a useful tool in policy analysis and public communication, it has become exciting and necessary to calculate a simplified quantitative indicator to measure progress of the 2030 agenda which has several and interrelated dimensions. Accordingly, this study aims to construct an SDG index that measures the Africa’s progress from the perspective of the 5 transformative areas. The proposed index provides a scientific measure and policy tool to advocate for SDGs transformative areas in Africa. In addition, identifying the disparities between countries and Africa Subregions that would allow paving the way to support decision-makers. The index will help countries to highlight challenges and key enablers to achieve the SDG agenda.
The study uses the SDG monitoring framework to identify set of indicators to measure each dimension. Essential procedures for constructing the composite index will be applied including A) Normalization, B) Assigning the weight and C) Aggregating the indicators within and across dimensions. Moreover, to ensure the statistical validation and reliability of the Africa SDGs index, tests will be employed such as testing collinearity/redundancy between indicators. In addition to testing the sensitivity and robustness of the index. The index will use the SDGs global database as a main data source.