United Nations Sustainable Development Goals

The UN SDGs are a blueprint for human progress and a clear call to action for businesses to contribute to a better future.

The climate crisis, war and the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and other global crises have meant that the world is facing a reversal of progress on many of the SDGs. At their mid-point, around half are off-track and over 30% have regressed or stalled. Under current trends, the UN estimates that 575 million people will be living in extreme poverty by 2030 and 84 million children will be out of school. Meanwhile, the world is at hunger levels not seen since 2005, the window to limit the rise in global temperatures is closing quickly, and it will take an estimated 286 years to close the gender gap.

Digital technology will be essential in reducing these impacts and helping progress towards delivering the SDGs. We are working to play our part and believe we can increase the speed and scale of delivery across a wide number of SDGs through leveraging our technology and services, and through partnering with others. Simultaneously, we can drive significant growth. For example, our M-Pesa mobile money platform, designed to enable financial inclusion, has over 66 million customers with over 33 billion transactions amounting to more than €351 million made this year, the equivalent of around 4 million per hour on average through a network of more than 617,000 agents. M-Pesa is also accepted by over one million merchants.