Targets and indicators necessary to track progress on SDGs

African universities have been called upon to start contributing effectively to the United Nations’ 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that the continent is lagging behind on.

This will require a targeted approach of partnerships between governments, academia and industry, according to a universities vice-chancellors’ panel at the Southern African Regional Universities Association’s (SARUA’s) first digital colloquium titled ‘Regional Collaboration of Higher Education in the post-COVID-19 era’.

“There is a need to transform universities’ vision to address SDGs in an integrated manner and universities should now focus on target indicators of the SDGs as a practical guide to act locally and impactfully,” said Professor Dhanjay Jhurry, the vice-chancellor of the University of Mauritius, at the first in a series of events on 19 May, which focused specifically on SDGs.

But, to effectively address the SDGs agenda, Jhurry said, universities require financing through strategic alliance and green financing; human capital through masters programmes by a consortium of universities; intellectual capital through a novel PhD model geared towards impactful research; business capital through setting up university industry clusters at local and continental level; social capital through social innovations like living labs and growing entrepreneurs; and sustainability through addressing SDGs in a targeted approach.

“To achieve the SDGs agenda, countries will require leveraging innovative partnerships with higher education institutions, enhancing strategic partnerships between higher education institutions, researchers and policy-makers towards actionable knowledge, a demand-driven approach and experience of the academic, municipal governments, the private sector and the civil society organisations to create local solutions, pull funding from multiple sources and take collective actions,” he said.

“Student engagement and mobility is also key,” he added.

He said this could be done through promoting international mobility of students, pursuing a path of serve, learn and sustain initiative, and aiming at exposing all students to principles and practices of sustainability, and of community engagement.

Aim to achieve the full set of goals

Martin Oosthuizen, the executive director of SARUA, said universities have another important role in the SDGs as a driver for the achievement of the full set of goals through their role in human formation, knowledge production and innovation.

But there are questions about the extent to which the university, at heart an institution oriented towards the development of knowledge and understanding, can and should be held to such practical and immediate impact on the world around.

“The question that needs to be answered is to what extent do the SDGs provide a concise and clear framework for explaining the contributions of higher education or alternatively restrict our understanding of the role of higher education for development?” asked Oosthuizen.

Jhurry said a coordinated approach is required for an integrated bottom–up approach in order to create a mapping framework at institutional, national and regional level; a top-down steering mechanism to coordinate collaborative work on SDG achievement institutionally, nationally and regionally.

“This requires a contextually appropriate mapping framework that is inclusive because, to allow all the higher learning institutions to contribute to the SDGs, they need to map their achievements to avoid marginalisation,” he said.

“Also, institutions need to use [a] mapping framework primarily for developmental and not ranking purposes to allow similar institutions to benchmark, learn and collaborate.”

According to Jhurry, who has done research on how African universities are engaging with the SDGs, they are involved in or focusing on just under half of the goals (47%).

The key SDGs universities should focus on and address include SDG2 (zero hunger), SDG3 ( good health and well-being), SDG4 (inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all), SDG7 (access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy), SDG8 (decent work and economic growth) and SDG14 (life below water).

A holistic understanding of university education

Professor Puleng LenkaBula, the vice-chancellor of the University of South Africa (UNISA), said universities are uniquely placed to lead the cross-sectional implementation of the SDGs and advance the 2030 agenda.

They are capable entities in building, strengthening and institutionalising partnerships with government and communities to achieve SDGs. They can promote dialogue and engage on the global level, she said.

One point that should guide work around SDGs, Puleng said, is that sustainable development is nested in a set of political, moral and epistemic assumptions that are not shared by all.

“Most of what we read and hear about development, including SDGs as targets and indicators, rest on the assumptions of mainstream economic thinking. When applied to higher education, the mainstream thinking perpetuates the essentialist orthodoxy of development which promotes the advancement of human capital and the modernisation of societies,” she said.

“Our framing of the higher education for development needs to go beyond the dominant development orthodoxy and advance a more nuanced and holistic understanding of university education, research and engagement.”

LenkaBula said a significant gap in knowledge and evidence exists. There is still a need to document the wide variety of activities relevant to SDGs being undertaken by universities, particularly in low- and middle-income countries like those in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region and to assess a consonance between activities of teaching, research and innovation, engaged scholarship and campus operations.

“There exist a number of unanswered questions in terms of the institutional forms and practices that can best support the SDGs and the influence of local and national contexts,” she said.

Measurement of research and impacts outputs are perhaps the most developed metrics of all higher education institutions because these outputs can be categorised by using keyword phrases to one of the SDGs.

She said it is also useful to consider the extent to which education institutions are a part of networks, alliances or consortia. In doing so we can establish mechanisms by which higher education institutions can harness joint efforts to tackle some of the common challenges.

Integrate SDGs into visions and policies

Dr Carmen Van-Dunem dos Santos of the Universidade Agostinho Neto’s (Agostinho Neto University) faculty of sciences in Angola, said universities should take a lead role and be part of the economic development by addressing the SDGs agenda.

“Universities should focus on transforming societies, the planet and people. This is not only through research but also through the SDGs,” she said.

For universities to work towards SDGs effectively, the panel recommended that there is a need to review approaches to university transformation in national policies and strategies’ role in sustainability.

SDGs should be integrated into universities vision and SARUA should create an interest group to work on a mapping framework that includes a focus on targets and indicators as a practical guide for universities to act locally and with impact.

It should also focus on selected SDG goals in relation to economic development at regional level; the sharing of experiences and best practices at regional-international level through university SDG clusters and cluster leaders and the development of the capability to present national and regional mapping reports on SDGs achievement. This would help to assess the practical impact of the mapping framework.

Also, the SADC should recognise the importance of collaboration for SDG achievement: cross-sector academia, government and industry.

The SADC should create appropriate coordination mechanisms for collaboration, which includes the SADC’s regional SDG cluster, the alignment of SADC centres of excellence with the SDGs and the mapping of SDG achievement to key SADC policy documents.

The SADC’s industrialisation strategy and regional inductive development plan, including collaborative regional work on the SDGs in the SADC protocol, will also be helpful.