The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH Ghana, has successfully held an official closing event for the at the Agenda 2030 project at the Airport View Hotel in Accra.

The project, with funding from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and under the Support for Decentralisation Reforms (SfDR) programme, was set up to improve data-based development planning for the implementation of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) and other national and particularly, sub-national development priorities.

The SDGs provide a global framework for ensuring inclusive development and since data is at the heart of achieving this objective, the project has over the years collaborated with government and non-government organisations to provide readily available data in its lowest disaggregation to shed light on persons farthest left behind. 

The Agenda 2030 project, through these partnerships, have strengthened district-level monitoring of the medium-term development plans and the SDGs; introduced innovative data collection, capacity building and harmonisation of data production; undertaken advocacy and data sharing, while fostering a robust SDGs stakeholder collaboration.

In addition, the project supported the Ghana Statistical Service to develop the multi-dimensional poverty index (MPI), which provides real-time insights into people’s wellbeing, particularly of the vulnerable groups who suffer multiple deprivations in the country. The ultimate objective is to have the MPI as part of the basket for district level resource allocations.  

Furthermore, the Agenda 2030 project helped strengthen CSOs engagement with government, which enhanced their role as government “watchdogs” to ensure accountability. This is evident in a joint production and presentation of the CSOs’ Shadow report at the high-level political forum in New York. This complementary report provided a comprehensive picture of how citizens perceived our achievement of inclusive development vis-a-vis what the government reported to be its achievement on that same topic.

The Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development (MLGRD), the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC), the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS), the CSOs Platform on the SDGs and the Global partnership for Sustainable Development Data (GPSDD) have been key partners in realising the objectives of Agenda 2030.    

The closing ceremony was attended by the Government Statistician, Prof. Samuel Kobina Annim; the Director of Policy at the NDPC, Dr Addo-Yobo; Acting Director of the Research, Statistics and Information Unit of MLGRD, Raphael Edu-Gyan among other dignitaries.

Speaking on behalf of the GIZ Ghana Country Director at the closing ceremony, Raphael Frerking, Programme Manager of the GIZ Governance for Inclusive Development (GovID), stated that, GIZ will strengthen the partnership with actors within the data ecosystem to produce the needed statistics at the local level of governance where actions directly impact lives of citizens.

The development of the DDDP web-based platform, Dr Addo-Yobo from NDPC asserts, is very useful in bridging local level data gaps that the commission has identified.

Mr. Frerking added that, the Agenda 2030 component and partners developed innovative data management tools.

One of such is the District Development Data Platform (DDDP) which was developed together with MLGRD and NDPC, to enhance the performance of local assemblies, including CSOs.

The Government Statistician, Prof. Samuel Kobina Annim, acknowledged GIZ’s collaboration with the Ghana Statistical Service, which led to the implementation of the first national multi-dimensional poverty index and piloting the use of Citizen-generated data to provide statistics on solid waste management and gender-based violence in Ghana.

In delivering the closing remarks, GIZ Internal Generated Funds Component Manager Alf Bremer, mentioned that some work packages from the just ended Agenda 2030 project, like the DDDP, will be integrated into the GovID programme.