Improved Local and National Government Capacities for Localizing SDGs and Agenda 2063 Through Voluntary Local Reviews in Ghana

The Division for Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DSDG/UNDESA), in collaboration with the Ghana National Development Planning Commission (NDPC), the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), the United Nations Resident Coordinator (RCO) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Ghana, is organizing a national capacity building workshop on “Improved Local and National Government Capacities for Localizing SDGs Through Voluntary Local Reviews in Ghana” from 14-16 November 2023.

 The capacity building workshop is convened in the context of UNDESA’s mission to advise interested Governments on the ways and means of translating policy frameworks developed in UN conferences and summits into programmes at the country level and, through technical assistance that helps build national capacities to integrate the 2030 Agenda and its SDGs into national development plans and strategies. Capacity building activities are also aimed at strengthening and maintaining the capabilities of states and societies to design and implement strategies that minimize the negative impacts of unprecedented and overlapping challenges, including the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, a cost-of-living crisis that has been triggered by rising inflationary pressures and conflicts, and the triple planetary crisis, namely climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss.  As a cross-cutting entry point, capacity building activities promote the integration of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and regional development frameworks such as AU Agenda 2063 into national sustainable development planning frameworks, sharing lessons learned and good practices through workshops and related events.

The 2030 Agenda recognizes that capacity-building forms part of the means of implementation for the SDGs (paragraph 41). Each SDG contains targets relating to means of implementation, including capacity- building. Moreover, SDG 17, which covers means of implementation and the global partnership for sustainable development, contains target 17.9 which aims to: "Enhance international support for implementing effective and targeted capacity-building in developing countries to support national plans to implement all the sustainable development goals, including through North-South, South-South and triangular cooperation”.

In this regard, UN DESA’s Division for Sustainable Development Goals’ (DSDG) supports localization of the SDGs through sub-national Voluntary Local Review (VLR) processes and their linkages to Voluntary National Reviews (VNRs) through the provision of advisory and policy guidance, including through its Global Guiding Elements[1] for the VLRs, and through capacity development, including hybrid workshops at international, regional, national and sub-national levels.

The present national capacity building inception workshop is supported by UNDESA’s United Nations Office for Sustainable Development (UNOSD) that is supported by the Ministry of Environment of the Republic of Korea, Incheon Metropolitan City and Yonsei University. UNOSD has trained a variety of national level actors from Ghana on the SDGs and seeks to advance national policy support on multi-level governance and SDG localization, given the challenges and priorities expressed in the 2022 Ghana VNR. The workshop will build on the first voluntary local report that was prepared in 2020 by the Accra Metropolitan Assembly[2] with technical support from the National Development Planning Commission and provides a benchmark for replication in other metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies.

Please see below agenda for the meeting and concept note for your information.