November 2018: The Strategic Youth Network for Development (SYND) in Ghana has analyzed the level of youth inclusion in the government’s planning and implementation of local-level programmes in support of the SDGs. SYND’s report finds “no evidence of active youth participation” in decision-making processes, and raises concerns about Ghana’s ability to localize the SDGs.
As part of its commitment to achieve the SDGs, the Government of Ghana established a technical committee to localize the SDGs and Africa’s Agenda 2063. Local district authorities are expected to report on their progress towards localization of the SDGs in annual progress reports that are submitted to the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC). Based on these reports, the NDPC publishes a National Progress Report on Ghana’s national medium-term development agenda, which is titled, ‘An Agenda for Jobs: Creating Prosperity and Equal Opportunity for All,’ and which “draws inspiration from” the SDGs.
The SYND report focuses on local-level interventions related to climate change, biodiversity, forestry, energy access and gender. In several districts, SYND finds no specific interventions related to climate change and biodiversity. In Kumsai metropolis, the report finds a significant reduction in the quality and quantity of urban forest, but notes that the district assembly did not propose any intervention to address this deforestation. A few districts installed solar panels but were not tracking how they were contributing to renewable energy targets. The report recommends promoting environmentally friendly projects, such as climate-smart investments and renewable energy projects.
Localization of the SDGs will be “extremely difficult if not impossible” without a change in the reporting culture of the District Assemblies.
SYND’s analysis finds that youth did not actively participate in decision-making around the SDGs, raising concerns about gender equality and social inclusion. The report expresses additional concerns about measurement of interventions that contribute to achievement of Ghana’s medium-term development agenda. For example, the report states that information related to progress on infrastructure, energy and human settlement was “vague” and interventions “are immeasurable” and do not show evidence of progress from one year to the next. The report further argues that more needs to be done to disaggregate data and information. In several districts, for example, the report observes that youth employment data has not been disaggregated by percentage of females and males employed.
The report concludes that achieving localization of the SDGs in Ghana will be “extremely difficult if not impossible” without a change in the reporting culture of the District Assemblies. The report recommends the NDPC develop a user-friendly, comprehensive reporting format based on SDG targets and indicators to promote consistency in reporting across Ghana’s districts. The report further recommends that the NDPC ensure that all data and information on gender and youth are disaggregated, and that APRs have baseline information to facilitate annual tracking of progress. [Publication: Assessing the Localization of the SDGs: The Case of Ghana] [SYND website]