New York — During a side event held at the ongoing High Level Political Forum, countries called on partners to organize a thematic Africa day at the margins of every HLPF to enable countries to articulate and sharpen a common African position. They also called for building awareness and rolling out of tools in support of SDGs and Agenda 2063 implementation, tracking and review.
Themed, "Implementing the Sustainable Development Goals and Agenda 2063: A Sharing of Experiences and the Way Forward Post-Africa Regional Forum for Sustainable Development and Voluntary National Reviews", the side event took place Monday, 16 July 2018, at the Observer Mission of the African Union to the United Nations, in New York.
In her presentation, Fatima Denton, Director of the Special Initiatives Division, ECA stressed the need to strengthen practical peer learning at the Africa Regional Forum on Sustainable Development - ARFSD, as well as at the annual HLPF. She highlighted the need for the ECA, OSAA, UNDP and AUC to commission evidence based tools, thematic, national or subregional case studies to be presented at the ARFSD and HLPF to showcase good approaches, tools, practices and experiences to strengthen peer-learning during the ARFSD and HLPF sessions.
Bartholomew Armah, a Senior Regional Advisor at the ECA presented the SDG integration tool and underlined that the tool facilitates a coherent approach to integrating and tracking progress on the SDGs and Agenda 2063. The software, he said, also tracks performance on the indicators of a national plan with the possibility of isolating aligned indicators.
Mustapha Sadni Jallab, Head of Training and Research Division at the ECA training institute, IDEP informed the meeting of the efforts underway to implement the SDGs and Agenda 2063 through training. He indicated that IDEP will continue to sustain its approach to train government officials on greening industrialisation and economic transformation, among other structural issues. This is done on the basis of capacity development needs expressed by Member States.
Adeyinka Adeyemi, Senior Advisor at the ECA took the meeting through the PIDA Model Law, a tool developed by the ECA which can help in the implementation of SDGs 6 and 9 as well as Agenda 2063. "The PIDA Model Law is an infrastructure investment magnet for African countries who domesticate it," he stressed.
In his presentation, Mansour Ndiaye, Cluster leader, Sustainable Development at UNDP Africa emphasised the importance of: taking Maps to the subnational level through localization; moving towards a more explicit focus on poverty and deepening risk analysis and a more systematic engagement within the UN together with the AU and other partners.
Participants of the 2018 HLPF, representatives of African Member States, African Union, United Nations system, as well as development partners were in attendance.
Note to Editors: The 2018 HLPF presents an opportunity to advocate for Africa's priorities, including national and regional policies and international support measures to ensure accelerated implementation of the two Agendas. In this regard, it is seen as an excellent opportunity for African Member States, including those that have undertaken Voluntary National Reviews (VNRs) in the past three years, to share experiences, lessons learned as well as good practices. Member States will highlight, for example, innovative processes, stakeholders' engagement, coordination mechanisms, localization and the integration of the 2030 Agenda and Agenda 2063 into national development plans, as well as roadblocks, gaps and challenges to the implementation.
According to the organizers, the experience sharing forum plays an important part in the implementation of both Agenda 2030 and 2063 as most as Member States are often not aware of the full range of such tools or their relative merits and relevance to their specific circumstances.
