SADC Education for Sustainable Development Framework on the horizon
11 SADC countries (Angola, Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, United Republic of Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe) will attend the UNESCO-SADC Policy Dialogue on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in Johannesburg from 14 to 16 March 2022.
The policy dialogue is a platform to engage policy actors and educational leaders on ESD activities as a way of advocating for ESD integration into policies, curriculum, and leadership activities in the SADC region.
This dialogue will be conducted using a hybrid format, gathering approximately 100 participants face-to-face and others joining virtually. Delegates from the 11 countries are from Ministries of Education, Environment and Sustainable Development, key NGOs, Sustainability Starts with Teachers alumni, ESD for 2030 focal persons, policy makers, senior education actors and SADC secretariat.
Delegates will contribute to a draft SADC Strategic Framework for ESD that will be presented to the next SADC ministerial meeting in June 2022. The Strategic Framework for ESD in the SADC Region is in the context of the ESD for 2030 framework and within the wider programme of the Futures of Education initiative of UNESCO that seeks to reaffirm education as a common good, and to support a transformative orientation to education which recognizes that if education is to shape peaceful, just, and sustainable futures, education itself must be transformed.
The dialogue is one of UNESCO’s responses to the aspirations enunciated in the Regional Indicative Strategic Development Plan (RISDP) 2020–2030 of SADC, that is to develop and implement programmes, in order to improve human capacities for socio-economic development, in areas including: education and human resource development; health, HIV/AIDS, pandemics, and other diseases of public health concern; poverty eradication; employment and labor; food and nutrition security; and gender equality. Environment and Sustainable Development are among the cross-cutting issues highlighted in the plan.
The project is in cooperation with Rhodes University with kind support from SIDA.