SDG Center for Africa

African countries need to track the performance of the UN SDGs 2030 and AU 2063 development agendas, including other regional commitments for evidence-informed policy formulation and implementation as well as the agendas’ achievement. The success of the global agenda for SDGs, regional commitments and national priorities highly depend on efficient and robust Monitoring and Reporting (M&R) System. Based on the evidence from the Voluntary National Review (VNR) for Uganda, most African countries lack official statistics and disaggregated data to measure their SDGs indicators framework’s progress.

The M&R System is a dedicated monitoring and reporting system for the continent that implements SDGs 2030, Agenda 2063 and national plans and allows countries to generate and visualize country-level reports to track and assess their development and growth performance. The software is built on the robust DHIS2 platform, a generic tool with an open metadata model and flexible user interface that allows the user to define the contents (indicators, data elements, targets, dashboards, scorecards) of a specific information system without the need for programming.

As part of a strategy to assist East African Community (EAC) member states in bridging data gaps and generate country-level performance reports, The SDGC/A, in collaboration with the SDG Secretariat, Office of the Prime Minister in Uganda, facilitated a training on the SDGs Monitoring and Reporting (M&R) System Training of Trainers (ToT) at Ridar Hotel in Mukono, 7 June 2021 to 16 June 2021.

The purpose of the M&R system training workshop was to practically demonstrate the relevance of the features of the M&R System for tracking and reporting the SDGs and Africa aspirations at the national and local level. The training for Uganda was underpinned by a more thorough country readiness assessment that covered capacity gaps/ requirements for effective functioning of national M&R System. The first part of the technical training workshop explored the key modules of the National M&R System, including M&R system user roles, data entry best practices, data exportation and importation in/from National M&R system, troubleshooting, use of pivot table, visualization, report workflows and exportation, use of dashboards and scorecards while the second part involved M&R system customization, maintenance, and deployment.

The training workshop was officiated by Dr. Albert Byamugisha, Head of SDG Secretariat in Uganda, Office of the Prime Minister.

SDG Focal Points from Reporting Ministries attending the Trainer of Trainers (ToT) for National M&R System

The SDGC/A has customized and deployed the National M&R System for Uganda, and fully transferred the knowledge and system rights in order to ensure ownership and accountability at all levels of the SDG framework and make sure that “no one is left behind” in the achievement of the SDGs. In close collaboration with the SDG secretariat, Office of the Prime Minister, the SDGC/A will continuously provide technical capacity for all elements of the National M&R system, including assisting SDG focal points to identify, localize SDG target indicators and reporting on the SDGS via both in-person piece of training and interactive web-based platforms. In an attempt to accelerate governments’ action on SDGs at all levels, the SDGC/A further acknowledges the oversight role of parliaments in planning, monitoring and reviewing progress on SDGs. Through the SDGC/A’s planned parliamentarians training program, the SDGC/A, in collaboration with its partners and SDG focal points, aims to support and work with existing parliamentary forums to build and strengthen their capacity on data generation for evidence-based SDG tracking, informed policy advocacy and SDGs accountability.

The SDGC/A Embarks on in-country SDG Monitoring and Reporting (M&R) System Training.