Special Event 4: Implementing national STI4SDG roadmaps – capacity building and Partnership in Action | Department of Economic and Social Affairs

Background

please access the webcast here

This special event will explore means and ways to support the implementation of national STI4SDGs roadmaps and highlight national pilot projects. It will build synergies with ongoing STI roadmap collaborations with other strategic partners and will use substantive inputs from the 10 Member Group, and other key stakeholders. It will help participants to use the STI roadmaps as complementary tools for policy making, building capacity and scaling up adoption of countries’ STI for SDGs Roadmaps. It will also discuss the path forward for the Partnership in Action and assess the relevance of STI4SDG roadmaps and related capacity building for accelerating progress towards the SDGs.

Chair by H.E. Mr. Thomas Woodroffe, United Kingdom Ambassador to the UN Economic and Social Council

Mr. Tom Woodroffe was appointed as the UK’s Ambassador to the Economic and Social Council in July 2019. This is his second appointment to the UN in New York, having previously covered human rights and gender issues. Mr. Woodroffe has a wider background in multilateral and conflict related work, including serving as the Head of the UK’s Syria Overseas Network in Istanbul, as Deputy Head of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s Conflict Department, as head of the Office of the Prime Minister’s Special Representative on Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict, and various roles in the FCO’s UN and human rights departments.

Moderator:
- Mr. José Ramón López-Portillo Romano, Chairman, Q Element Ltd., Advisor to Mexico Government, member of the UN SG’s 10 Member Group for the TFM
Panelists:
- Ms. Lotta Tähtinen, ad interim Chief, Integrated Policy Analysis Branch, United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA)
- Mr. Sachin Chaturvedi, Director General, the Research and Information System
  - Prof. Sachin Chaturvedi is currently Director General at the Research and Information System for Developing Countries (RIS), a New Delhi-based Think-Tank. He works on issues related to development economics, involving development finance, SDGs and South-South Cooperation, apart from trade, investment and innovation linkages with special focus on WTO. Currently he is Member, Board of Governors, Reserve Bank of India. He was Global Justice Fellow at the MacMillan Center for International Affairs at Yale University; Developing Country Fellow at the University of Amsterdam (1996); Visiting Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies, Shimla (2003); and Visiting Scholar at the German Development Institute (2007). He has served as a Visiting Professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and has been closely associated with the UN Food and Agricultural Organization, World Bank, UN-ESCAP, UNESCO, OECD and many other agencies.
    
    His book “The Logic of Sharing – Indian Approach to South-South Cooperation” has been acclaimed internationally as one of the best volumes on international development cooperation. Apart from this he has authored/edited 21 other books, apart from contributing several chapters in the edited volumes and publishing several research articles in prestigious journals.
- Mr. George Essegbey, Director, Science and Technology Policy Research Institute (STEPRI), Council of Science and Industrial Research, Ghana
  - Dr. George Owusu Essegbey has worked in Science, Technology, and Innovation (STI) policy research for several years in the broad sectors of agriculture, industry, environment, and across key thematic areas including innovation studies, sustainable development, biodiversity conservation, and capacity building. He is an STI policy researcher at the rank of Chief Research Scientist and was the Director of the Science and Technology Policy Research Institute (STEPRI) of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) of Ghana for more than 10 years. Currently, he is the Chief Executive Officer of the CSIR-Technology Development and Transfer Centre (CSIR-TDTC). He has served various national and international organizations with his expertise including UNESCO, UNCTAD, UNEP, FAO, IFPRI, and the World Bank. Dr. Essegbey was at one time a member of the UN 10-Member Group appointed by the UN Secretary-General to support the Technology Facilitation Mechanism. He is currently the President of AfricaLics with Secretariat in Nairobi. AfricaLics is the network of researchers in Learning, Innovation and Competence-building systems in Africa. In Ghana, he is among other things the Resource Person for Ghana’s STI Roadmap for the SDGs sponsored by UNESCO and he is facilitating the revision of Ghana’s National STI Policy.
- Mr.Solomon Benor,Director General of Science and Research Affairs,Ministry of Science and Higher Education, Ethiopia
High-level respondents:
- Mr. Robert Kayinamura, Minister Counsellor, Deputy Permanent Representative of the Republic of Rwanda to the United Nations
- Ms. Ismahane Elouafi, Chief Scientist of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)
  - Ms Ismahane Elouafi is Chief Scientist of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, and part of FAO’s core leadership structure.
    
    With nearly two decades of experience in agricultural research and development in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Ms Elouafi is a strong advocate for diversifying into neglected and underutilized crops. She is also internationally known for her work on promoting use of non-fresh water in agriculture and empowerment of women in science.
    
    Ms Elouafi Ms. Elouafi has been a member of various strategy expert panels and advisory groups. Her contributions to science and policy have been recognized with a number of prestigious awards and accolades, in particular the Excellence in Science Award from the Global Thinkers Forum.
    
    Dr. Elouafi holds a Ph.D. in Genetics.
Interactive discussion:
- Mr. Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga, Professor of Science, Technology, and Society (STS) at MIT
- Mr. Alfred Watkins, Founder and CEO, Global Solutions Summit
  - Alfred Watkins is Founder and Chairman of the Global Solutions Summit (GSS) which promotes the large-scale deployment of financially sustainable, disruptive technological solutions to implement the SDGs in emerging markets. In 2021, the Nobel Foundation invited the GSS to host a panel entitled "From Results in the Lab to Results on the Ground" in connection with the 2021 Nobel Prize Summit, "Our Planet Our Future." In February 2022, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine invited him to serve as a member of an expert panel charged with identifying key research priorities and possible actionable steps needed to operationalize sustainable development at the global and local levels. In March 2017, UN Secretary General António Guterres appointed him to the Governing Council of the Technology Bank for the Least Developed Countries (LDCs).
  - Prior to founding the Global Solutions Summit, he worked for more than 23 years at the World Bank and served for more than six years as the World Bank’s Science and Technology Program Coordinator and head of the World Bank’s Science, Technology, and Innovation Global Expert Team. He has extensive on-the-ground experience leading science, technology, and innovation capacity building programs and projects in Rwanda, Ghana, Vietnam, Malaysia, and various countries in the Former Soviet Union including Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Latvia. Before joining the World Bank, he also served as a legislative assistant to then-Congressman Charles E. Schumer, a staff economist on the staff of the US Congress Joint Economic Committee, and an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin.
- Ms. Angela Sarcina, Territorial Development Unit, Joint Research Centre, European Commission

Dr Angela Sarcina is currently Project leader for STI for SDGs at the Joint Research Center of the European Commission, within the Territorial Development Unit, working on developing the analytical and methodological approach to effectively design and implement STI for SDGs roadmaps, policies or action plans and at supporting countries, particularly in Africa and EU Neighborhood, to embed SDGs into their STI policies promoting place-based innovation for sustainability.
Previously, she worked at UNESCO within the Division of Science Policy and Capacity Building, contributing to support Member States in strengthening national STI systems and policies. Before UNESCO, she was Research Fellow at the Department of Engineering for Innovation of the University of Salento (Italy), where she carried out research on innovation policies in Europe and China. She was also Visiting Research Fellow at Jinan University (China) where did field research on technology transfer dynamics of Chinese firms.
She holds a double PhD in Industrial Economics and Policies from the University of Ferrara and the South China University of Technology. She holds a BSc in Economics of Public Administration and International Institutions and MSc in Applied Economics and Economic Policies at the University of Ferrara. She was visiting research student at the University of California Los Angeles and the University of Birmingham, and she had short work experiences at UNIDO in Vienna and the Italian Embassy in Zambia.

Mr. Fernando Santiago, Industrial Policy Officer, UNIDO
Fernando Santiago is an Industrial Policy Officer at the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO). He specializes in the provision of industrial policy advisory services, and capacity development activities on industrial policy and innovation policy in developing countries. Fernando serves as the UNIDO focal point on topics related to science, technology innovation (STI), including for the UN Inter-Agency Task Team on STI for the Sustainable Development Goals (IATT). He is also member of the Scientific Board of the LALICS network (Latin American Network for the study of Learning Systems, Innovation and Skills Construction), and a member of the Technical Advisory Committee of the intergovernmental Commission on Science and Technology for Sustainable Development in the South (COMSATS). Before joining UNIDO, Fernando's professional experience included research, teaching, public sector programming and private consulting services obtained in Mexico and Canada. He has published in high-quality journals on topics related to STI policy, industrial policy, and organizational learning with emphasis on developing countries. Fernando is an economist from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, and holds postgraduate degrees from SPRU-University of Sussex, and UNU-MERIT-University of Maastricht.