Only one in five project professionals is highly confident that their organisation can deliver on its sustainability commitments, exposing a widening gap between corporate ambition and the ability to translate environmental, social and governance goals into projects across Africa, according to new research by the Project Management Institute (PMI) and Green Project Management (GPM). The findings, based on nearly 1,600 professionals across 35 countries, come as African governments and businesses accelerate investment in infrastructure, energy, water, digital systems and industrial development, raising questions over whether sustainability commitments are being incorporated into the projects expected to deliver the continent’s next phase of growth.
The research, published in the report “Executing Sustainability Strategy: When Ambition Meets Reality”, found that 85% of sustainability executives were extremely confident that their organisations could meet their sustainability goals, compared with just 20% of project professionals. Confidence was also substantially lower among Project Management Office leaders, at 43%, suggesting that optimism declines as sustainability strategies move closer to implementation.
That disconnect matters in Africa because many of the continent’s sustainability objectives are ultimately delivered through projects rather than policy documents. Renewable-energy plants, transmission networks, water infrastructure, transport systems, housing, broadband networks and climate-resilient agriculture all require project teams to convert broad objectives into decisions about procurement, design, budgets, timelines, materials and community engagement.
According to the research, 79% of respondents regard sustainability as important to their organisation’s long-term success, yet only 41% said it was fully integrated into projects and everyday operations. Overall, 59% of organisations had not fully embedded sustainability into project delivery and operational decision-making. Researchers identified recurring obstacles including difficulty quantifying sustainability benefits in business terms, weak integration into decision-making, unclear objectives, competing delivery priorities, limited visibility into outcomes and challenges in tracking results over longer periods.
The problem is particularly consequential for African economies, where large-scale infrastructure spending is closely tied to economic productivity and public finances. A renewable-energy project that meets its construction deadline but fails to deliver expected emissions reductions, local employment or reliable electricity may satisfy conventional measures of project completion while falling short of its broader development purpose. The same applies to water, transport and digital infrastructure, where environmental resilience and social inclusion increasingly determine the long-term value of capital investments.
George Asamani, PMI’s Managing Director for Sub-Saharan Africa, said sustainability commitments would have limited impact if they were not embedded in project delivery. He noted that strategy alone does not build power stations, expand broadband networks or improve water security; projects do.
The distinction is becoming more important as development finance and private investment increasingly incorporate environmental and social considerations into capital allocation. African countries competing for climate finance, infrastructure investment and ESG-linked capital face growing pressure to demonstrate not only that projects have sustainability objectives, but that those objectives can be measured and delivered.
For governments, this creates a capability challenge. Sustainability requirements can be incorporated into procurement documents and project agreements, but implementation depends on whether project managers, engineers, financial teams, procurement officers and contractors have the skills and data needed to act on them. Without that capacity, sustainability risks becoming an additional reporting requirement rather than a factor shaping project decisions.
The consequences extend beyond climate targets. Weak project-level integration can affect cost efficiency, resilience and social outcomes. Energy projects, for example, must increasingly account for resource efficiency, land use, local employment and community impacts alongside generation capacity. Transport projects face questions around emissions, accessibility and resilience to extreme weather. Water projects must consider both infrastructure performance and the changing hydrological conditions that determine their long-term viability.
Africa’s infrastructure deficit makes this execution gap particularly significant. The continent requires substantial investment to expand electricity access, improve transport networks, strengthen water systems and build digital infrastructure. Those investments are being made against a backdrop of fiscal constraints, high borrowing costs and competing development priorities. Failure to incorporate sustainability considerations during project design can therefore create additional costs later, particularly where infrastructure needs to be retrofitted to cope with climate risks or changing regulatory requirements.
The issue also intersects with the continent’s progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals. The United Nations’ 2025 Sustainable Development Goals Report found that only 35% of SDG targets were either on track or making moderate progress, while 18% had regressed. The project-delivery gap does not explain those trends on its own, but it illustrates a broader challenge: commitments made at national and institutional level must eventually be translated into funded and executable programmes.
For African businesses, the implications are similar. Sustainability is increasingly connected to operational risk, access to capital, supply-chain resilience and market expectations. Companies that cannot connect ESG commitments to investment decisions may find it harder to demonstrate the economic value of their sustainability programmes to investors and lenders.
This does not necessarily mean that organisations need more sustainability strategies. The research points instead to the need for clearer definitions of success and stronger alignment between leadership, project teams and operational functions. Sustainability objectives need to be sufficiently specific to influence project choices, while project professionals need access to the data, authority and expertise required to incorporate those objectives into delivery.
PMI and GPM have responded to the skills challenge with a Certified Sustainable Project Professional certification and e-learning programme based on the PMI GPM P5 Standard for Sustainability in Project Management. The framework expands conventional project measures beyond time, cost and scope to consider people, planet, prosperity, process and product.
The broader question for Africa is whether sustainability expertise can become part of mainstream project management rather than remaining concentrated within specialist ESG teams. As governments and companies undertake major investments in energy transition, industrialisation, infrastructure and digitalisation, project professionals will increasingly determine how sustainability commitments are reflected in practical decisions.
For development institutions and investors, stronger project-level capability could also improve the credibility of sustainability claims and the quality of investment pipelines. For governments, it could help ensure that infrastructure spending delivers value beyond physical assets. For communities, the difference may ultimately be visible in whether projects produce reliable services, employment and resilience rather than simply meeting construction milestones.
Africa’s sustainability challenge is therefore becoming less about declaring what should change and more about demonstrating that institutions have the capacity to deliver it. The continent’s development pipeline will require billions of dollars in new projects, but the quality of those investments will depend not only on the capital available. It will also depend on whether the people responsible for turning strategies into infrastructure, services and businesses can measure sustainability outcomes, manage trade-offs and remain accountable for results.
The research suggests that the distance between a sustainability commitment and a completed project remains significant. Closing that distance will be an important test of whether Africa’s expanding sustainability agenda can translate into durable economic, environmental and social outcomes.
