Africa Office to host SDGs Kenya Forum

Development Initiatives’ Africa Office will host the SDGs Kenya Forum in 2018.

The SDGs Kenya Forum and Development Initiatives (DI) have agreed that the forum’s secretariat, including National Coordinator Ms Florence Syevuo, will be hosted in DI’s Nairobi offices throughout 2018.

This partnership, which is expected to lead to even deeper collaboration between both organisations, will support forum members’ work around the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – including contributing to national reporting, building capacity among key decision-makers, and raising awareness at the county level.

The SDGs Kenya Forum is an open platform for local stakeholders including civil society, the private sector and media actors to generate constructive ideas and engage other stakeholders in key development processes that support the achievement of the SDGs in Kenya.

DI has been a member since the forum’s formation in 2016, and shares its commitment to implementing the ‘leave no one behind’ agenda at national and subnational level. Collaboration led by the two organisations in 2017 – supported by SDGs Kenya Forum members – focused on sensitising communities to the SDGs, and culminated in a national dialogue that was captured in the civil society supplement to Kenya’s Voluntary National Report, annexed into the National Report for presentation at the 2017 High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development.

Angela Kageni, Head of Development Initiatives’ Africa Office, said: “Our collaborative work with the forum has strengthened the involvement of civil society in national-level SDG planning and reporting processes, and paved the way to discussions around how citizen networks and data can be used within national planning and reporting systems.

“We look forward to continuing and developing our partnership with the forum as we welcome the secretariat to our Nairobi offices over the next year.”