Sustainable Development Analysis

In recent years, there have been huge awareness campaigns and policy debates about the role of gender equality in development all over the world. This is partly due to changing views on the meaning of development. Nowadays, development is not just about infrastructure and growth of wealth but it’s about how every human beings’ life is changed or affected for the better. The republic of Chad is a sub-Saharan African country with an area size that makes it the 5th largest country in Africa. It has a considerable amount of natural resources such as petroleum and in 2003, Chad officially became an oil exporting country. This should have boosted its economic status and increased the level of development but still, Chad remains among the top 5 poorest

On September 25 2015, a Resolution on the 2030 agenda for sustainable development was adopted by the general assembly at the United Nations to replace the millennium development goals. This agenda contained the 17 sustainable development goals that officially came into force on the 1st of January, 2016. The sustainable development goals are “integrated and indivisible and they balance the three dimensions of sustainable development: the economic, social and environmental.” (UN, 2015). One of the ways the sustainable development goals differ from the millennium development goals is that the SDG’s are applicable to all countries while the MDG’s were more about rich countries donating funds to poor countries. They include: “no poverty, zero hunger, health and wellbeing, quality education, clean water/sanitation, affordable and clean energy, reduced inequalities climate action, infrastructure/innovation, partnership for the goals, etc” (UN,

To have a better understanding, one can look at it through the framework of Amartya Sen’s capability approach. This approach focuses on how external factors have a direct influence on what or how much an individual can achieve. Per Sen, “gender inequality can be understood much better by comparing things that matter such as functioning’s and capabilities rather than means like primary goods and resources” (Sen, 1992) . basically, it recognizes how political, social and other environmental factors impact a person’s wellbeing which in my opinion, impacts development. The first factor that probably comes to mind is, how has gender inequality impacted economic development? Unfortunately, by making comparisons with rankings on the global gender index, and GDP per capita, gender inequality or equality has no direct impact on economic