The South African SDG Hub was launched about two years ago by South Africa's Minister in the Presidency, Jeff Radebe. We support the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by enabling access to relevant, useful and reliable knowledge resources, providing policy advice, promoting dialogue and building capacity.

We build active partnerships with all actors in academia, government, the private sector and civil society interested in sharing their expertise or resources towards implementing the SDGs.

Our users are leaders in government, the private sector and civil society

The South African SDG Hub’s primary goal is to impact positively on the implementation of the SDGs by linking policy makers with SDG-relevant evidence, especially peer-reviewed research.

We seek to reach this goal by means of four work streams:

1. Knowledge sharing
Relevant, useful and reliable knowledge is shared by means of an open access platform with SDG-relevant peer-reviewed research, innovations, reports and news

2. Policy advice
The Hub seeks to impact positively on SDG-relevant policy making by producing policy briefs and by connecting government partners with researchers and/or research centres of excellence.

3. Dialogue promotion
Regular roundtables are aimed at promoting dialogue between academic disciplines, sectors and line ministries on SDG-relevant themes.

4. Capacity building
The Hub seeks to contribute to building capacity to implement the SDGs by means of short courses and by supporting dedicated degree programs.

We have built high-trust and high-level relationships with the South African government, notably the Department of Science and Technology, the Department of Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation, the Department of Environmental Affairs, the Department of International Relations and Cooperation and Statistics South Africa.

We have also established partnerships with the African Union, United Nations Development Programme and development partners, notably Germany.

We categorise our output in terms of each of our four work streams:

1. Knowledge sharing
We established an open access online repository, available at: www.SASDGHub.org. With an Artificial Intelligence grant from Microsoft, our team of developers is developing an Artificial Intelligence solution to improve the platform's search function.

2. Policy advice
We published South Africa's first major multi-stakeholder publication on the SDGs, available at: http://sasdghub.org/new-publication-implementing-the-sdgs-in-south-africa/. We also realised an impactful policy brief, available at http://sasdghub.org/features-of-effective-sdg-co-ordination-mechanisms-emerging-good-practices/.

3.Dialogue promotion
In collaboration with the United Nations and the South African government we co-curate a monthly SDG Bulletin: https://us12.campaign-archive.com/home/?u=a531ef448f6b3979279e66c89&id=495924c5d6.

4. Capacity building
We host Africa’s first interdisciplinary postgraduate degree on the SDGs. University World News provided a write-up of the programme here: http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20180409134900175&query=fourie

Enabling factors:
- Buy-in from the South African government
- Strategic direction from high-level advisory board
- Institutional support from the University of Pretoria – provides access to world-class academics to conduct research and generate content.

Constraints:
Human capacity, mainly due to the insufficient funding.

The South African SDG Hub is currently particularly cost-effective. We have embarked on a fundraising campaign, as securing additional funds will enable its sustainability.

The South African SDG Hub is showing that there's a willingness amongst both policy makers and researchers to build partnerships to accelerate the realisation of the 2030 Agenda in Africa. We are the first initiative to build on this willingness to partner by developing an online platform and by organising dialogue forums. Unfortunately it is not that simple to measure impact - even website hits to not provide a good picture of how useful the information on the online platform is perceived to be. In our view, the number and quality of partnerships we have managed to build is a better sign of impact. In this respect the Hub is very successful - key government departments and multilateral organisations rely on the Hub for strategic input.

The following websites have profiled the Hub's achievements:
- The German government's Partners for Review, in their newest publication: http://www.partners-for-review.de/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Tracking-Progress-Together-P4R-Magazine-Nov.-2018.pdf
- The OECD: https://sdg-communicator.org/2018/05/04/sharing-sdg-knowledge-in-south-africa/
- The Global Partnership for Effective Development Co-operation: http://effectivecooperation.org/gpis/the-south-african-sdg-hub/