Widening of Africa’s SDG gap induced by global trade

Africa’s progress towards the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is at risk. Although global trade serves as a critical link between Africa and the global market, its impact on Africa’s progress towards the SDGs is still a matter of discussion. Thus, elucidating the mechanisms through which trade influences SDGs is essential for advancing global sustainable development. In this study, we utilized a Multi-Regional Input-Output (MRIO) model to develop the counterfactual scenario of “no-trade” aimed at measuring the net effects of global trade on Africa’s SDG 2.4, SDG 6.4, and SDG 13.2, which are interconnected within the water-food-climate system. Our results revealed that global trade reduced Africa’s average SDG score by 1.83, thereby exacerbating the disparities of sustainable development between Africa and the rest of the world. Although imports of water infrastructure and technology boosted performance on SDG 6.4 (+2.97), this progress was outweighed by declines in SDG 2.4 (-3.43) and SDG 13.2 (-5.04). We further observed significant variability across Africa that the adverse impact was most severe in low-income countries (-2.48), compared with lower-middle-income (-1.07) and upper-middle-income (1.77) countries. The environmental burden imposed by trade partners also differed markedly. High-income countries exerted the strongest negative effect, primarily by externalizing environmental costs through agricultural imports and embodied carbon transfers, whereas Asian economies present a trade-off between technological assistance for water conservation and the extraction of resources. Our research showed that Africa is increasingly compromising its ecological integrity in exchange for immediate revenue from resource exports. Consequently, it is urgently to implement green premium mechanisms and strategic conservation policies to decouple economic globalization from local environmental degradation. This study highlighted the environmental obligations that Africa holds within the global trade framework and clarified its driving mechanisms.