- Botswana becomes 10th country this year to be trained by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) in the Integrated Planning and Reporting Toolkit (IPRT)
- IPRT software combines Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) under the UN’s 2030 Agenda with the African Union’s Agenda 2063
- Dashboard spurs alignment on SDGs including eradication of poverty, gender equality and access to sustainable energy, alongside AU targets such as modern agricultural practices
10th November 2021 (Gaborone, Botswana) – Botswana has become the 10th African country this year to receive training in the Integrated Planning and Reporting Toolkit (IPRT) developed by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), after a four-day virtual course.
The dashboard – which combines the goals and indicators of both the UN and the African Union (AU) – supports countries in structuring national development plans aligned with the targets of the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the AU’s Agenda 2063.
The toolkit helps to assess progress on SDGs, including the eradication of poverty and hunger, gender equality, and access to sustainable energy, alongside AU targets, from developing high standards of living to applying modern agricultural practices for increased productivity. Alignment between the objectives of governments and intergovernmental organisations is aimed at flushing out inconsistencies in reporting and goal setting, and promoting efficient planning and administration, especially where there is overlap between goals.
Along with Botswana’s government, which completed its training on November 4, other countries that received IPRT training this year include Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Comoros, Egypt, Gambia, Liberia, Niger and Morocco. Cote d’Ivoire, Malawi and Zimbabwe are the target countries for the next round of training on the IPRT.
“This training comes at a difficult time for all economies in general and Africa in particular,” said Prof. Bartholomew Armah, Director of the Macroeconomics and Governance Division at UNECA. “The COVID-19 pandemic is a health crisis with significant economic ramifications for the global economy but African countries have been particularly affected as the continent suffered its first recession in decades. The unprecedented events caused by the pandemic make it even more important to strengthen our planning capacities. We believe that the IPRT can contribute to this objective.”
Users are able to see the level and strength of alignment between goals via an easy-to-use dashboard. The web-based toolkit is accessible from standalone and networked computers, and can be used offline in areas of limited Internet connectivity. The system is hosted at UNECA and is available to all AU members and regional economic communities through servers.
Data aggregated at regional and sub-regional levels is available to all users. Country level data is available only to national officials with user passwords. Member states decide which part of their data can be made public.
“The intention is that subsequent to this training, we move towards a comprehensive, consolidated framework that clearly identifies common threads between the two agendas where the goals, targets and indicators are partially or somewhat matching, similar language is to be adopted, and there is no confusion about what we are measuring,” said Tebogo Bagopi, Deputy Permanent Secretary in the Office of the President of Botswana. “And at any point, we should be able to gauge our monitoring capacity for both, and most importantly keep both frameworks alive.”
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