Pre-Event to the African Regional Forum on Sustainable Development, hosted by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa.

Cooperation for sustainable development (as envisaged in SDG17) between external actors and Africa often discusses assistance schemes and aid or trade or investment priorities. The debate is often on separate dimensions of sustainable development, be that economic, social or environmental dimensions. Furthermore, academic cooperation is usually phrased as capacity-development endeavours.
The GSDR discusses science and the science-policy-interface as one lever for a transformation towards sustainability as defined in the Agenda 2030. Key reference points for cooperation with Africa are the globally agreed Agenda 2030 as well as the continental vision as formulated by the Agenda 2063. For both agendas, science is not a sophisticated add-on, but rather plays a key role in the analysis and with regard to evidence-based recommendations to policy-makers in the process of transforming societies towards higher levels of welfare that do not exceed the regenerational capacity of nature and the planet, and yet caters for increasing population sizes.

Objectives:

• Introduce results of the GSDR and disseminate the results among relevant stakeholders on the African continent
• Identify opportunities for science in the debates on sustainability in the African context
• Discuss the orientation of research policies and funding towards sustainability on the African continent
• Discuss the international dimension of sustainability research and funding
• Bring together different groups of actors – Utilize the results to trigger cross-division cooperation and increase science-based policy making and policy coherence towards sustainable development