UNESCO- SADC Science, Technology and Innovation Online Training for High Level Officials continues

African governments are increasingly recognising the need to invest in Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) capabilities in order to respond to the socio-economic challenges they face and to achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the African Union Agenda 2063. As such, a good number of African governments have put in place STI strategies and plans towards promoting economic growth and eradicating poverty in their respective countries but they still need to align these policies with the global agenda.

It is against this background that UNESCO and SADC developed a virtual training programme to educate successive cohorts of high-level officials in Southern Africa, on the nature and policy implications of the systems of innovation approach to development. The main consequence of this programme would be to shift the location of STI policy and governance towards the core of national and regional development planning.

The virtual training commenced on the 13th of September 2021 and will cover seven modules over the next 3 months.

Module 3 which focuses on STI and Inclusive Development, continues on 20 October 2021. This module discusses the role of innovation in addressing the inclusive and sustainable development, also highlighting that achieving environmental sustainability is not separate from achieving social and economic inclusion.

Participating countries such as Zimbabwe and Namibia, are in a unique position to correlate the outcomes of this course with the ongoing Swedish funded project on Strengthening STI Systems for Sustainable Development in Africa. Zimbabwe and Namibia are two of the six pilot countries for the first phase of the project which aims to strengthen their national and regional STI policies, governance of STI, and institutions in research and innovation in accordance with the UNESCO 2017 Recommendation on Science and Scientific Researchers (2017 RS|SR).