Scaling up Voluntary Local Reviews in Africa: Responding to COVID-19 and Meeting the needs of the Decade of action .:. Sustainable Development Knowledge Platform

Scaling up Voluntary Local Reviews in Africa: Responding to COVID-19 and Meeting the needs of the Decade of action

Thursday, 8 July 2021

7:30 AM - 9:00 AM

Virtual (NY Time)

Side Event

UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) with UN-Habitat, DESA, OSAA and UCLG-A

The Seventh Africa Regional Forum on Sustainable Development (ARFSD-7) was held on 1-4 March 2021 with the theme “Building forward better: towards a resilient and green Africa to achieve the 2030 Agenda and Agenda 2063”.

At the Forum – which feeds into the HLPF – participants reviewed progress towards the SDGs through Voluntary National Reviews (VNRs) and Voluntary Local Reviews (VLRs), and addressed the specific impacts of COVID-19 in these reviews.

Member States underscored the importance of localizing the SDGs at the sub-national, governorate and municipal levels. Discussions were informed by a set of regional guidelines for localities to pursue VLRs, which were drafted in response to member State requests at ARFSD-6, and are eagerly anticipated by African localities to help ramp-up their VLRs as they look to rebuild sustainably from COVID-19 while leaving no one behind.

The side-event has three distinct objectives:

Share good practices and lessons learned from VLRs in the context of COVID-19 and the decade of action, with examples from Africa;

Launch the Africa VLR guidelines as a tool to support scaling of VLRs in the region;

Garners and strengthens partnerships for VLRs and VNRs – including a diverse mix of localities, grassroots stakeholders, regional organizations, national governments, etc.