01 Aug 2018

All stakeholders should be involved in producing quality, timely, accessible and reliable disaggregated data needed to monitor and evaluate the progress the country is making towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Statistician general, Dr Burton Mguni said this during a stakeholders consultative workshop organised by Statistics Botswana at Avani Hotel in Gaborone on July 31.

In his welcome remarks, Dr Mguni said the workshop had been planned to include diverse stakeholder representation across various thematic areas of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Dr Mguni said the Agenda 2030, with its sustainable development goals, targets and indicators was an ambitious agenda to transform the world.

“The SDGs are integrated and inseparable, balancing the three dimensions of sustainable development of the economic, social and environmental hence the wide range of their scope,” he said.

He further noted that the global indicator framework used to follow up on the progress of the implementation of Agenda 2030 was developed by the UN Inter Agency Expert Group (IAEG-SDGs) with Botswana represented by Statistics Botswana.

Dr Mguni also said the SDGs monitoring had put significant added pressure on National Statistical Systems to provide the required information and data on the indicators.

He further said there was need for strengthening the statistical capacity across the entire system, adding that the baseline report discussed provided a general measure of the current statistical capacity to avail data on the Global SDG indicators relevant to Botswana.

“It is therefore my sincere hope that today’s deliberations will present a wide range of views for discussion to learn from each other, pool efforts and build partnerships,” he said.

For his part, principal economist in the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development, Mr Kentse Raphukula said since the adoption of the Agenda 2030, Botswana has made numerous strides on key strategic interventions to localise the SDGs and align them to the local development framework, while undertaking awareness campaigns and dialogues on SDGs to advocate for their uptake as well as developing their roadmap to support their comprehensive implementation.

Mr Raphukula urged the representatives to collect all the necessary information to help influence decision making and policies.

“Everybody who collects information collects it to influence something. I therefore encourage and urge everybody who collects information to influence decision making and policies,” he said. ENDS