Professor Fulufhelo Nemavhola, Image: Durban University of Technology
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When the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were adopted in 2015, they gave the world one of the most ambitious frameworks for shared development in modern history. The 17 goals created a common language for poverty, hunger, health, education, gender equality, water, energy, work, infrastructure, inequality, climate action, peace and partnerships.
But the world of 2026 is not the world of 2015.
Artificial intelligence now shapes education, research, public administration, labour markets, health systems and democratic debate. Cloud infrastructure has become as strategically important as physical infrastructure. Data has become a source of economic power. Digital platforms increasingly mediate how societies learn, trade, communicate, govern and form political opinion. Cybersecurity is now a daily concern for universities, hospitals, municipalities and states.
The SDGs remain important. But as the world begins to think beyond 2030, it must confront a difficult question: can any country achieve sustainable development if it lacks the capacity to understand, govern, produce, and benefit from the technologies that increasingly determine its future?
This is why the world needs a serious conversation about the 18th SDG: technological sovereignty and digital justice – in particular in Africa and the Global South.
Technology is a field of power
This is not a call to multiply global slogans. It is a call to recognise that technology has become the operating system of development itself. Education, health, agriculture, energy, climate adaptation, industrialisation, public finance and governance are now mediated by digital systems, artificial intelligence, data infrastructure and advanced technologies. A development framework that treats technology only as an enabler, rather than as a field of power, dependency and justice, is incomplete.
Several proposals for an 18th SDG have already emerged. Some have argued for universal communication. Others have proposed responsible and inclusive artificial intelligence, digital technology, animal welfare, space sustainability, or ethnic-racial equality as possible missing goals.
These proposals are important because they reveal a wider truth: the 2015 SDG framework is now under pressure from realities that have intensified since its adoption. My argument is that the most comprehensive missing goal is technological sovereignty and digital justice, particularly for the Global South.
Technology in the list of 17
Technology is not absent from the existing SDGs. SDG 9 already speaks to industry, innovation and infrastructure. Other goals also refer to science, innovation, data, energy systems, education technologies and partnerships. But technological sovereignty, artificial intelligence governance, data justice, cybersecurity resilience and domestic innovation capability are not treated as development goals in their own right. That is the gap.
For Africa and the Global South, this issue is urgent. Many universities teach through foreign platforms, store research data in external cloud systems, rely on imported laboratory equipment, use artificial intelligence tools designed elsewhere, and depend on digital architectures over which they have limited control.
Many governments procure digital systems without building domestic capability. Many countries generate vast quantities of data without having sufficient sovereign infrastructure, technical expertise or regulatory capacity to govern that data in the long-term public interest.
This creates a new development divide. It is no longer only a divide between those with and without access to technology. It is a divide between those who design technology and those who merely consume it; between those who own data infrastructure and those who supply data; between those who govern artificial intelligence and those who are governed by it.
An 18th SDG should, therefore, be framed as follows: ensure equitable technological sovereignty, responsible artificial intelligence, data justice and inclusive innovation capacity for all nations.
Technological sovereignty
Such a goal would not promote technological isolation. Sovereignty does not mean autarky or withdrawal from global cooperation. It means the ability to participate in global systems with dignity, capability and bargaining power. It means that developing countries should not be permanent consumers of technologies designed elsewhere, but co-creators of the technological future.
Higher education must be central to this agenda. Universities cannot remain observers of technological dependence. They must become engines of technological capability. This means producing, not only graduates and publications, but also prototypes, patents, start-ups, open technologies, local platforms, community innovations, industrial partnerships and public-interest research.
Universities of technology play a particularly important role. Their mandate is applied knowledge, problem-solving, industry engagement and social innovation. They are well placed to translate technological sovereignty into practical development outcomes, including medical devices, clean energy systems, water technologies, agricultural tools, digital public infrastructure, cybersecurity capacity, smart manufacturing, and inclusive entrepreneurship.
But this requires a shift in how governments, funding agencies and universities define impact. Research systems often reward publications more easily than prototypes. They measure journal outputs more consistently than technology transfer.
They celebrate international collaboration but do not always ask whether it builds local capability. They encourage innovation rhetoric but underfund the laboratories, workshops, testing platforms, and commercialisation pathways required to move ideas into products.
An 18th SDG would help correct this imbalance. It would give countries, universities and development agencies a language for measuring technological capability as a development outcome. It would ask whether a country can build, maintain, adapt and govern the technologies on which its development depends.
The proposed SDG 18 should include measurable targets: affordable and secure digital infrastructure; responsible AI governance; national data protection and data sovereignty frameworks; cybersecurity readiness; local language inclusion in digital systems; investment in research and development; technology transfer; local manufacturing of critical technologies; support for university-based innovation; and fair participation of developing countries in global technology governance.
The United Nations has already recognised the importance of digital cooperation through the Global Digital Compact. That is a positive step. But a compact is not the same as a goal. A compact can guide cooperation; a goal shapes measurement, accountability, funding, institutional behaviour and political priority.
Existing goals depend on technology
The SDGs matter because they tell the world what to count. If technological sovereignty is not counted, it will remain peripheral. If digital justice is not measured, it will remain rhetorical. If innovation capacity in the Global South is not treated as a development priority, the world will continue to reproduce dependency while speaking the language of partnership.
The world does not need an 18th SDG as if the existing 17 were already irrelevant. It needs one because the existing goals are increasingly dependent on technology.
Health systems depend on diagnostics, data and medical technologies. Education depends on connectivity and learning platforms. Agriculture depends on sensors, climate intelligence and logistics systems. Climate adaptation depends on modelling, satellites and early-warning tools. Governance depends on secure information systems. Work depends on digital skills and readiness for automation.
Technological sovereignty is, therefore, not a separate development concern. It is becoming the foundation for many existing goals.
The SDGs promised that no one should be left behind. In the 21st century, those most likely to be left behind are countries, communities and institutions that are locked out of the technologies that define the future.
The world needs an 18th SDG. It should be technological sovereignty and digital justice.
Professor Fulufhelo Nemavhola is the deputy vice-chancellor for research, innovation, and engagement at the Durban University of Technology (DUT) in South Africa.
Jeddah Tower’s 430 metre elevation is just over half the height of Dubai’s Burj Khalifa.
100 floor milestone
Jeddah Tower has also hit the century mark in terms of floors.
It has now passed 100 floors and Kingdom Holding has said everything remains on course.
Inevitably, the landmark project requires a lot of concrete, with Jeddah Tower confirming it has used 67 per cent of what is required to complete the tower.
Site activity also covers façade installation and mechanical, electrical and plumbing packages.
The facade process has started, with more than 3,000 panels fitted at this juncture.
As aforementioned above, there is 6,400 workers on the job, and that has grown as the tower has got taller, the workforce is expecting to grow over the coming months.
Kingdom Holding has said there has been no fatalities on the job thus far, and that they have recorded over 16 million working hours without a lost time incident.
What will Jeddah Tower be used for?
Jeddah Tower will be a blend of residential, hospitality and office space when completed.
It will consist of about 530,000 square metres and will have several impressive observation facilities built into the structure.
Time to observe
It goes without saying that one of the key attractions of Jeddah Tower is going to be getting to the top of the world’s tallest skyscraper.
Observatory elevators are designed to travel at 10 metres per second in both directions.
That system will handle passenger movement across a building planned to exceed one kilometre.
Design specifications include 59 elevators, comprising 54 single-deck units and five double-deck elevators.
Another 12 escalators will serve circulation requirements across the building.
Adrian Smith and Gordon Gill Architecture were designed with the responsibility of designing Jeddah Tower.
The US company delivered the project Jeddah Tower is trying to knock off its perch, which is of course the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.
The mangrove forests of Qeshm Island off the coast of southern Iran. Nmarandi / Shutterstock
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Oil slicks moving along Iran’s southern coast have reached the Hara mangrove forests of Qeshm Island. Iranian authorities say the extent of the contamination is still being assessed and the source of the oil pollution has not yet been established. But several oil spills have been detected in the region since the war between the US and Iran began.
The Hara forests lie in the Khuran Strait, which separates Qeshm Island from mainland Iran. This waterway is close to the Strait of Hormuz – one of the most strategically important marine corridors on Earth. The Strait of Hormuz is normally discussed through the vocabulary of geopolitics: barrels of oil, shipping lanes, energy prices and global trade.
But beneath that geopolitical map lies another map that receives far less attention. The Strait of Hormuz and its surrounding waters are home to mangroves, coral reefs, seagrass beds, fisheries and coastal communities. They also provide the seawater upon which some of the world’s most water-stressed societies depend.
The Strait of Hormuz is not only an energy chokepoint. It is an ecological chokepoint. And prolonged conflict exposes both at the same time.
An oil slick on open water is a serious pollution event. But oil entering a mangrove ecosystem creates a different problem. Mangroves occupy the boundary between land and sea, with dense root systems that slow water movement and trap sediments.
The same characteristics that make these ecosystems extraordinarily productive also make them effective traps for pollutants.
While oil can be removed from the water surface, oil that penetrates shorelines and fine sediments can be much more difficult to address. Contamination can affect roots and seedlings and expose organisms living in or feeding on these sediments to pollution. Fish and birds can be affected through ecological pathways extending beyond the visibly contaminated trees.
Qeshm should also not be viewed in isolation. Earlier in the war, another oil slick near Kharg Island in the northern Persian Gulf was tracked. Satellite imagery indicated that currents were carrying contamination through the Khuran Strait towards the mangroves.
Researchers using satellite observations have also reported a marked increase in the frequency and extent of oil pollution in the Gulf since the beginning of the war. This is where the environmental significance of prolonged conflict becomes much larger than any individual spill.
What needs to happen now
The first priority in Qeshm must be containment. Preventing additional oil from entering the mangroves is far more effective than attempting to remove it once it has penetrated a complex inter-tidal environment.
However, containment alone is insufficient. Authorities need to establish the source and chemical characteristics of the contamination, map its spatial extent, combine field observations with satellite monitoring and sample water and sediments.
They will also need to establish baseline conditions in affected and unaffected areas and monitor mangrove condition, aquatic organisms and other ecological indicators over time.
Such efforts may themselves be constrained by the war. Conflict can make scientists, environmental agencies and emergency-response teams less able to reach the places where intervention is most urgently needed.
The response must also avoid causing additional damage. Following the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off the coast of Alaska, high-pressure hot-water washing removed stranded oil but also caused substantial additional damage to shoreline organisms and habitats.
In mangroves, where roots and sediments are particularly sensitive to physical disturbance, similarly aggressive interventions can do more harm than good. Most importantly, monitoring of the Hara mangrove forests cannot stop when the coastline looks clean.
There is a temptation during war to treat environmental damage as secondary: something to assess after questions of military strategy, diplomacy, energy supply and economic loss have been addressed. That hierarchy is difficult to defend.
Environmental systems are infrastructure. Mangroves protect coastlines and sustain marine ecosystems. Fisheries support livelihoods and food security. Soils support agriculture. Aquifers store water and coastal waters feed desalination plants.
Healthy ecosystems provide forms of resilience that become more – not less – important during periods of political and economic instability. Destroying or degrading them thus creates liabilities that can persist long after military operations have ended.
And unlike a bridge, pipeline or building, an ecosystem cannot necessarily be reconstructed. A mature mangrove forest is the product of biological processes that unfold over time. Lost ecological functions may take years to recover, and some changes may prove difficult to reverse.
This is why what is happening at Qeshm deserves attention well beyond Iran. The question is not whether this particular oil contamination represents an ecological catastrophe. We do not yet have the evidence to make that judgment. The more important question is what the event is telling us.
It is telling us that in a region where enormous volumes of hydrocarbons, dense maritime traffic, critical water infrastructure and fragile coastal ecosystems occupy the same narrow geography, environmental risk cannot be separated from geopolitical risk.
If the Iran conflict continues, the probability of further accidents, infrastructure damage, pollution and interrupted environmental management will increase. Some consequences, such as burning vessels, blackened coastlines or dead vegetation, will be immediately visible.
But others will accumulate quietly – in sediments, soils, groundwater, food webs and stressed ecosystems. It is these consequences that may ultimately prove harder to repair. While all wars eventually end, their environmental consequences do not necessarily follow the same timetable.
COP31 faces the hard part of meeting targets. Plus, the World Bank identifies a ‘lifeline’ for low-income nations.
COP31 will come without a blockbuster deal to negotiate — and with an identity crisis.
After decades of making promises, can the COP process finally prove it can deliver?
Talking Turkey
What do you do with a giant annual climate summit once most of the giant climate promises have already been made? That’s the slightly awkward question hanging over the 31st U.N. Climate Change Conference, or COP31, which kicks off in Antalya, Turkey, in three months.
For decades, COPs have been built around the drama of negotiating the next big target. Now comes the considerably less glamorous bit: actually delivering. “The system is experiencing growing pains because we’re moving from negotiating new targets to actually meeting them,” Joe Thwaites, international climate finance director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, tells my colleague Jesse Chase-Lubitz. “And we’re doing this against a backdrop of geopolitical rupture and an economic crisis.”
Last year’s COP30 in Belém, Brazil, offered a taste of how messy that transition could be. Brazil billed it as the “implementation COP,” only for the summit to descend into fights over the failure to phase out fossil fuel and a chaotic final plenary. One thing did gain momentum: the Action Agenda, where businesses, investors, cities, and NGOs try to turn all those lofty climate promises into things that actually happen.
Turkey is picking up that baton — and betting big on electrification. Its headline 35×35 push aims to raise electricity’s share of final energy demand from roughly 23% today to 35% by 2035. Australia, COP31’s first-ever cohost, is meanwhile focusing on access to finance, with Fiji and Tuvalu hosting the pre-COP and leaders segment, respectively, in the lead-up to Antalya.
And yes, we’re going to talk about climate finance again. Developing countries never loved the $300 billion-a-year target agreed at COP29, while rich countries have become conspicuously less enthusiastic about announcing shiny new multiyear pledges. “Governments no longer see these commitments as a point of diplomatic pride,” Thwaites says, “and quite likely, they’re seeing them as a domestic political liability.” Or, even more bluntly: “There’s no peer pressure, there’s no race to the top.”
So COP31 doesn’t have one enormous deal to land. Instead, it has something arguably harder to prove: that the world’s sprawling climate summit can evolve from a place where governments make promises into one where those promises actually go somewhere. And after 30 COPs, that may be the reckoning the process needs.
Going around gridlock
And Turkey has a plan for getting climate action moving when the big global negotiations don’t: Don’t wait for everyone to agree, Jesse writes.
Ahead of COP31, Turkey is exploring a new South-South and Triangular Cooperation Climate Initiative aimed particularly at least developed countries and small island developing states. The idea is to connect countries with practical expertise, technology, financing, and solutions that can help them actually deliver their climate plans.
And “actually deliver” is very much the theme of COP31. “COP31 presents a timely opportunity to demonstrate how South-South and triangular cooperation can drive climate implementation,” says Dima Al-Khatib, director of the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation. “Beyond negotiations, we must strengthen platforms that connect countries with solutions, innovators with investors, and local experience with global partnerships.”
The proposal also fits neatly into Turkey’s broader attempt to make COP31 about implementation rather than another round of grand declarations. Abdullah Eren, the president of Turkish aid agency TİKA, wants a practical road map that can “transform ideas into concrete partnerships” and “deliver tangible outcomes for COP31.” In other words: fewer promises, more things that might actually get done.
There’s another attraction. With wealthy countries increasingly reluctant to make big new climate finance pledges, a south-south mechanism wouldn’t need everyone on board. A smaller coalition of willing countries could simply get moving — much like COP’s increasingly important Action Agenda, which allows governments, businesses, investors, cities, and civil society to pursue climate initiatives outside the painfully slow consensus negotiations.
But there’s a catch. For now, this is still an idea, not a new pot of climate cash. Organizers haven’t yet settled what it would fund, how it would be governed, or how it would fit alongside existing initiatives. And because it sits outside the formal negotiating process, it won’t be binding or appear in a COP decision. That’s the trade-off: It may be easier to get moving precisely because nobody has to agree.
This aerial drone photo taken on March 18, 2026 shows the Xiong’an Railway Station in Xiong’an New Area, north China’s Hebei Province. Photo: Xinhua
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What will tomorrow’s cities look like? Glowing waterways, sleek transit pods gliding on neon tracks, and a digital utopia of glossy, frictionless perfection – just ask any AI to paint the future, and this is probably how you get sold the dream.
However, turning such imagination into the reality of an actual “city of the future” is far more complex. The grander the skyward vision, the more it depends on solid engineering, sustained investment, and robust governance to bring those ambitions to life. This is the universal challenge facing every bold urban experiment, whether it rises from the coast or fertile plains. Today, the Jeddah Central Project on the shores of Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea and the Xiong’an New Area on the North China Plain, while born from different national contexts, offer two distinct answers to the very same question.
Look toward Jeddah’s historic western coast, where centuries of maritime tradition meet modern ambition. Backed by the country’s Vision 2030, this multi-billion-dollar urban reboot aims to turn a core city district into a global magnet for tourism, culture, and investment, fundamentally reshaping how the city grows. Pouring massive capital into reinventing an existing urban core into a world-class hub is a bold statement on how to approach modern urban renewal.
At the heart of this ambition are four landmark cultural additions – an opera house, a museum, a sports stadium, and an oceanarium – backed by a 9.5-kilometer waterfront, a shiny new marina, and residential spaces that mix smart tech with traditional Hijazi design. Together, they aim to weave the Kingdom’s deep-rooted maritime heritage into the fabric of a buzzing modern destination, creating a vibrant space where past and future seamlessly meet.
Bringing an audacious vision of this scale into the physical world naturally involves a process of dynamic refinement. Rather than chasing a vague blueprint, the Jeddah Central Project is structured around a three-phase rollout, with the first phase locked in for completion soon, according to media reports. Backed by billions of Saudi riyals in initial construction contracts signed with major international and local contractors, the work on the ground is methodically moving forward: heavy infrastructure, smart utility networks, and marine engineering are steadily taking shape, breathing practical life into the city’s core.
Thousands of miles away on the North China Plain, Xiong’an New Area is also pursuing an inspiring trajectory. Rather than chasing immediate skylines, Xiong’an has spent years perfecting what lies unseen: an integrated network of underground utility tunnels and a digital twin model of the entire city.
This long-term focus extends to its environment. Long before the heavy density of urban life arrived, China prioritized the restoration of the Baiyangdian Lake, anchoring the new city in green space and ecological resilience rather than concrete alone. It reflects the belief that resilient cities are built from the ground up – both physically and institutionally.
Today, that methodical groundwork, rooted in “a plan designed for the millennium,” is yielding concrete results. The area has gradually become home to more than 1.4 million residents, while more than 400 subsidiaries of state-owned enterprises and 4,000 Beijing-based firms have moved their operations there, transforming a national policy into an emerging economic hub. These milestones are the result of years of unglamorous, day-to-day cultivation – laying deep roots before ever reaching skyward.
Side by side, the two megaprojects reveal two different philosophies for building “the cities of the future.” The Jeddah Central Project chose the path of brownfield renewal – breathing new life into an existing urban core with an ambitious vision backed by a step-by-step rollout. Xiong’an, meanwhile, breaks the usual mold of massive greenfield development that focuses on chasing quick-win skylines and rapid commercial returns, emphasizing foundational infrastructure and long-term urban planning from the outset.
Neither path offers an easy shortcut, for both demand extraordinary capital, engineering precision, and sustained political willpower. Nor is either complete: Jeddah’s ambitious urban reboot still has to navigate the intricate realities of heritage preservation and long-term capital sustainability, while Xiong’an’s industrial clusters and population are still scaling up.
Ultimately, they highlight distinct dimensions of national capability. Saudi Arabia demonstrates how capital and ambition can open new frontiers, while China illustrates how long-term planning and industrial capacity can gradually transform visions into reality. Far from competing paradigms, their respective approaches – one boldly reaching skyward with visionary ambition, the other patiently laying deep roots through foundational execution – present fertile ground for mutual learning.
As emerging technologies redefine society, building the cities of tomorrow remains an exercise in patience. No amount of glowing digital art can dispense with the unglamorous groundwork of institutional coordination, just as no amount of infrastructure can substitute for the bold, pioneering spirit that revitalizes urban life and redefines historic centers. That is perhaps the deepest lesson shared by both the Jeddah Central Project and Xiong’an: The future belongs only to those who possess both the vision to reach skyward and the patience to lay deep roots.
The author is a reporter with the Global Times. xiawenxin@globaltimes.com.cn
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