News

40 participants, primarily officials from Ministries of education including policy makers, planners and statisticians from southern African countries are meeting in Johannesburg, South Africa from 9-11 December 2019 to review implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4).

While last year’s SDG4 review meeting focused on countries’ needs, challenges, and sharing of best practices, this year the focus is on examining how to reach SDG 4 commitments through coherent and targeted policies; examining existing mechanisms to coordinate and bring education stakeholders towards achieving SDG4 including partners’ support to specific identified areas; and strengthening monitoring mechanisms and institutionalising reporting through effective quality data production  cycle (collection, management and analysis).

At the end of the meeting, countries are expected to have a shared understanding of the alignment of policies, coordination, monitoring and reporting mechanisms for SDG4 as well as  a renewed, enhanced and sustained commitment in effectively harmonizing SDG4 and Continental Education Strategy for Africa (CESA) into their national policies, plans and programmes as well as coordinating, monitoring and reporting.

UNESCO has the mandate to lead SDG4 implementation and coordination through supporting its member states in policy guidance, capacity development, monitoring and advocacy. UNESCO Regional Office for Southern Africa thus supports the annual review meetings in Southern Africa.

This year’s meeting is also attended by other partners including the SADC secretariat, UNAIDS, UNICEF and UNFPA.

For more information please contact: Ms Julia Heiss at J.Heiss@unesco.org.

URL:

https://en.unesco.org/news/southern-african-countries-converge-review-sdg-4-implementation