SDG Africa Network Dialogues

Dialogue 1: Discussion on the vision for African countries, from the prism of future young African leaders

1. What ought to be the sustainable development goals from the perspectives of African youths?

1. Where would African countries operate in the value chain of the global market, leveraging on technology and global marketplace – from the lower, middle to the upper end?

• How will agriculture move from small-scale to mechanized large-scale farming with youth involvement?

1. What is the pathway for inter-trade among African countries to move from theory to practice, with regional and continental integration moving from constant discussion to implementation?

1. What innovations will improve Africa’s hard infrastructure (energy, transport, communications, etc.) and social infrastructure (health and education), human)
   by 50 per cent come 2030?

Dialogue 2: On the conditions to achieve the objectives of Dialogue 1

1. Creating and sustaining transformational and visionary leadership in Africa.

1. Ensuring that African leaders hold themselves accountable to eradicating corruption and self-dealing.

• Engendering workable institutions and strong reward and retribution system.

1. Borrowing from positive aspects of indigenous African knowledge and culture while doing away with their retrogressive practices.
2. The youth and communities learning to organize and articulate the urgency and need for change: using social media to communicate the vision for their communities and forming change agent and groups.

Dialogue 3: How would the SDGs help in achieving the above vision and objectives?

Should young African leaders accept the SDGs as workable without critical review? The Dialogue will offer a critical review of the SDGs, especially from country level, in the context of the paths China, Malaysia, Singapore and other emerging and middle-income countries took.

Our Approach to the Dialogues:

Moderator/Facilitator sets the SDGs agenda; highlights some of the good things that these goals will make. Moderator will bring in some decision makers, political leaders to opine.

Government representative discusses approaches to fostering the enabling environment for achieving the SDGs, highlighting actions taken by the government through specific initiatives and the associated policies, regulations and monitoring. The inputs will describe the types of instruments being deployed for capitalizing actions toward the SDGs, who manages them and how the instruments can be accessed by elements of the economy – businesses (large, medium, small and informal sectors), communities, women and youth

Representatives of private sector, United Nations and development institutions (bilateral and multilateral) bring in cases from other countries.

Academics, women, youth, religious leaders and community actors respond, addressing issues such as organizing for accountability advocacy; establishing networks and the environment for social actions, especially to ensure that ideas filter into the initiative and outcomes can be tracked; examples of good cases of advocacy on accountability; approaches for creating and leveraging champions

Building capacity, grassroots support and ensuring inclusion, not forgetting that majority of Africans whose voices can amplify actions of the elite are not included in major schemes.

Discussions will include providing the means for the millions of Africans - who are artisans and engaged in micro-enterprises but are not linked to the value chains of the formal sector – to be integrated into instruments of the special initiatives.

Moving on from here: Who should be involved? What will be needed to move to the next step? How will progress be monitored?