Governance and Sustainable Development Goal One (SDG1) “No Poverty” in Africa

The international community has come to expect much of foreign development aid in recent years, especially since the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) at the UN Millennium Summit in September 2000. The MDGs aim inter alia by 2015, to halve the 1990 figures for numbers of people living in extreme income poverty, achieve universal primary schooling, and reduce by two-thirds the 1990 mortality rate among children worldwide. A key component of the strategy to achieve, or at least work towards, the MDGs is a substantial scaling-up of aid flows by OECD donor nations (United Nations Millennium Project, 2005). This strategy is clearly evident in aid statistics on global Official Development Assistance (ODA) from members the Development Assistance Committee of the OECD (see Figure 1.1). The level of DAC ODA rose from US$69 billion in 2003 to US$107 billion in 2005, the highest annual level of ODA on record. While the level of ODA fell slightly to US$104 billion in 2006, it is expected to rise to US$130 billion in 2010, and to somewhere between US$160 and US$170 billion by 2015 (OECD, 2007a, 2007b).

This study contributes towards the achievement of the United Nations (UN) 2030 Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 1.3 which is to ‘implement appropriate social protection for all to mitigate risk and vulnerability’ by examining how social protection interventions contribute to agricultural participation in 15 West African countries which are members of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Data for the study were sourced from the World Bank Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA), World Development Indicators (WDI) and the World Governance Indicators (WGI) for the period 2005–2018. The study applied the generalised method of moments (GMM) to resolve the possible issue of endogeneity that may result from the pooled ordinary least squares (POLS) and fixed effects. Findings showed that social protection is a significant driver of agricultural participation. This is based on the fact that two social protection variables included in the model, social protecting ratings and policy for social inclusion, are positive and statistically significant in explaining the level of agricultural participation in ECOWAS. This implies that a percentage increase in the level of social protection ratings and policy for social inclusion may increase agricultural participation by about 7.36% and 3.94%, respectively. The study recommends that effective social protection policies and programmes should be designed to transform the agricultural sector in West Africa.

Eradicating poverty in all its forms is one of the targets of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as it has been majorly defined by the international poverty line. Neglecting time poverty may deter the achieving the target of total eradication of poverty. Thus, this study assesses time poverty with the view of revealing the danger of focusing on only income poverty without considering time poverty in cities. The study adopted a grid sampling technique to select seven hundred and thirty-two households for questionnaire administration in Geographical Open Data Kit (GeoODK) across thirty-six wards in two selected cities of Nigeria. Analytical techniques such as Foster–Greer–Thorbecke indices, correlation, Getis Ord G., and mapping techniques were applied in this study. The results reveal a random spatial pattern of time poverty severity; a negative correlation between income poverty incidence and time poverty incidence; and a positive correlation between income poverty gap and time poverty gap. This study concludes that as many residents escape income poverty, they enter time poverty as they spend more time earning a daily income, which poses a danger in eradicating poverty in all its forms. This study recommends a policy of earning a daily income above the international poverty line without spending more than standard daily working hours if Sustainable Development Goal One is truly achieved.

Since the 1950s, German states and municipalities have gained importance in the field of development co-operation. They provide the highest levels of official development assistance (ODA) compared to their peers in other members of the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC) and account for more than 60% of total decentralised development co-operation (DDC) volumes reported as ODA. While the majority of German DDC is carried out within borders, the multi-level governance system for DDC, established by the German federal government, incentivises municipalities and states to engage in international partnerships through dedicated programmes and financial support schemes. Halfway to the 2030 Agenda, these efforts to strengthen international partnerships and localise the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Germany provide an opportune moment to take stock of the German DDC approach and exchange experiences among countries.

The study investigated the innovative ways that technical and vocational education can be managed for the attainment of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in technical schools in Rivers State. The study adopted a descriptive survey design. Three (3) research questions and three (3) hypotheses guided the study. The population of the study consisted of 5000 students from 4 Government Technical and Vocational Schools in Rivers State. Stratified random sampling technique was used to select a sample size of 500 out of 5000 students. A Self – structured questionnaire titled “Innovative Management of Technical and vocational Education Students Questionnaire (IMTVESQ)” was used to elicit responses from the respondents. Cronbach Alpha method was used to establish a reliability index of 0.78. Mean, standard deviation and rank order were used to answer research questions while Z-test was used to test the hypotheses at a significance level of 0.05. The findings of the study revealed among others; that the contributions of technical and vocational education towards the attainment of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in technical schools in Rivers State include: promotion of skill development, employment generation, provision of training and capacity building for teachers, poverty reduction in the society through food production and improved standard of living, raising employers of labour, instead of job seekers etc. It was concluded that the provision of quality education and adequate funding according to reasonable percentage suggested by UNESCO from the total budget, expected to serve as impetus for technical and vocational education teachers/ lecturers towards becoming more productive in the attainment of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Rivers State’s technical schools. It was recommended that Government should evolve more policy directive and implement the existing ones to the later for the needed change. Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) should also be more involved, investing maximum resources in the educational system; in order to encourage skill development and entrepreneurship spirit among youths, and to improve motivational strategies among teachers/ lecturers in technical schools in Rivers State.

Some democratic governments prefer a more ambitious and generous development policy than others. These governments hold stronger preferences for realizing the sustainable development goals defined by the UN, including the eradication of poverty, the right to education, the protection of human rights, and the safeguarding of the environment in developing countries. Yet, the extent to which democratic governments can realize their preferred development policies varies significantly. In this article, I analyze the discrepancies between governments’ development policy preferences and the level of official development assistance (ODA) they provide. On the theoretical side, I analyze governments’ discretion to increase their level of ODA. Specifically, I argue that unified governments that face weak institutional constraints find it easier to transfer their ambitious development policy preferences into higher levels of ODA. On the empirical side, I study the level of ODA in 33 OECD countries over a period of 23 years. Analyzing speeches at the UN General Assembly, I apply an innovative operationalization of governments’ concern for global development. My findings support the argument that governments’ discretion in domestic politics facilitates an increase of ODA.

The new United Nations (UN) sustainable development (SD) agenda in 2015 heralded the beginning of a new global effort for the planet's sustainability through the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). They provide a framework for all countries, regardless of income levels, to guide national planning for achieving SD. Climate change may impact almost all SDGs and vice versa, though, of the 17 SDGs, the 13th is designated to climate action. The growing concern for environmental degradation has raised the question of how countries will manage to achieve SDGs and whether the answer can be found in their institutions. Reducing emissions necessitates environmental policies influenced by political institutions that shape policy adoption and implementation. This paper aims to analyze the effects of institutions adopting the dimensions of good governance on particular SDG indicators of the 13th SDG by using a Nonparametric Kernel Regression framework and a panel data set of 5 Western Balkans (WB) countries from 2000 to 2020. The target countries share the ambition of EU accession and hold the EU candidate status. WB countries spark our interest because of the severe institutional governance problems, which limit their ability to progress towards SDGs. The paper's empirical analysis uses a specific SDG indicator for the 13 SDG of the Europe Sustainable Development Report, similar to that used by the OECD for the report on Measuring Distance to the SDG Targets. The analysis includes as independent variables the World Governance Indicators (WGI). Contributing to the existing literature on institutions and SD, the novelty of our approach is the use of the WGI with SDG indicators in measuring the impact of quality of governance on the progress towards the 13th SDG referring to climate action.

Without any shred of doubt, poverty is one of the social issues that has no regard for tribe, race, country, or other ways by which we group people all over the world. The major difference when it comes to poverty is the level with which it affects different countries. The irony of the whole situation is that what some countries refer to as poverty is prosperity for some others. Third world countries are grappling with serious level of poverty, and Nigeria is not left out. In fact, the poverty level is so astounding that it poses great danger to countries all over the world due to its security implications and effects on world peace. As the international poverty benchmark got increased to $1.90 from $1 in September 2015, many Nigerians were further pushed below poverty line. It can be argued with very little contradiction that factors such as poor governance, mismatched allocation of resources, unemployment, lack of equity, corrupt practices and many others are responsible for the extreme level of poverty in Nigeria. The study adopts structural functionalism as the analytical framework to examine the effects of various interventions by civil society organizations within and outside Nigeria, on the level of poverty and the attainment of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) in Nigeria. In addition, the mixed method (of both primary and secondary data) is used to collect data while content analysis is applied. The study observes that for the level of poverty to reduce drastically in Nigeria, there is need for good and effective leadership, strong institutions, as well as using public-private partnership. Keywords: SDG (Sustainable Development Goals), CSOs, international poverty line, DOI: 10.7176/IAGS/95-05 Publication date: July 30 th 2022

<p>Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) countries have benefited for more than fifty years from international aid in the form of loans and/or donations. Nevertheless, they seem not to benefit from these massive financial resources (ODA) they receive because their economic and social situation is not very good. This study aims to assess the impact of ODA on economic growth in SSA and to see if its effect on growth is conditioned by the quality of the economic policy. The estimates are conducted on a dynamic panel of twenty-three SSA countries running from 1985 to 2014. With macroeconomic data from the World Bank's CD-ROM (World Development Indicators, 2015), the Generalized Method of Moment (GMM) system from Blundel and Bond (1998) was used. The results show that the impact of ODA on growth is not significant. Subsequently, when squared aid (ODA2) is included in the estimate, ODA becomes significant, meaning that a substantial amount of assistance is required to be effective in raising the economic growth rate of the SSA countries. In addition, the effectiveness of ODA is conditioned by the quality of the economic policy. This seems to be bad in SSA, hence the negative impact of the aid on economic growth.</p>

This study used survey results to describe selected adult South Africans’ knowledge of and attitudes towards the attainment of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Results revealed that more females than males claimed to have been taught about the SDGs and that more young people than the elderly claimed to have adequate knowledge of the SDGs. Results also revealed that those with a high school education claimed not to have been taught about SDGs, whilst those with a Masters education claimed to have been taught about SDGs. Interestingly, half of the PhD graduates indicated that they had not been taught about SDGs, which may indicate that increased levels of education do not translate into a better knowledge of the SDGs. In terms of the perceived impact of COVID-19 on the attainment of SDGs, results indicated that the majority of respondents aged between 31–40, believed that the pandemic has made the SDGs less attainable by 2030, with much fewer younger respondents expressing such a sentiment. Respondents with higher levels of education were of the view that COVID-19 will have a negative effect on the attainment of the SDGs by 2030. These results are important for policy and developmental planning in the face of COVID-19.

Research in sustainable development, program design and monitoring, and evaluation requires data analytics for the Sustainable Developments Goals (SDGs) not to suffer the same fate as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The MDGs were poorly implemented, particularly in developing countries. In the SDGs dispensation, there is a huge amount of development-related data that needs to be harnessed using predictive analytics models such as deep neural networks for timely and unbiased information. The SDGs aim at improving the lives of citizens globally. However, the first six SDGs (SDGs 1-6) are more relevant to developing economies than developed economies. This is because low-resourced countries are still battling with extreme poverty and unacceptable levels of illiteracy occasioned by corruption and poor leadership. Inclusive innovation is a philosophy of SDGs as no one should be left behind in the global economy. The focus of this study is the implementation of SDGs 1-6 in less developed countries. Given their peculiar socio-economic challenges, we proposed a design for a low-budget deep neural network-based sustainable development goals 1-6 (DNNSDGs 1-6) system. The aim is to empower actors implementing SDGs in developing countries with data-based information for robust decision making.

은 전 세계적으로 증가하고 있는 상황이다. 2008년 세계적 This paper aims to examine the factors that affect the amount of official development assistance (ODA) a developing country receives for healthcare by the Korean government. We empirically tested to what extent the amount of Korea’s ODA in health care services, infrastructure, HIV/AIDS, and tuberculosis are affected by the relevant demand factors in the recipient countries. To do so, we carried out country-level multivariate regression analyses by setting the amount of ODA for four health care sectors as dependent variables and the relevant demand factors and economic factors as independent variables. A panel dataset was constructed by combining ODA data from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and World Development Indicators. The analyses showed that the ODA for health care in Korea is partly meeting the recipient’s health care needs. In particular, the recipients with a smaller number of physicians are likely to receive more ODA for medical services. Meanwhile, the amount of international trade with Korea is likely to affect the amount of ODA for medical services. However, disease factors, such as prevalence of HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis, did not positively affect the amount of ODA for those diseases. These results indicate that Korea’s ODA system for health care needs to be improved to meet the demand of the recipients in order to achieve the humanitarian objectives set by the international community. We hope that the medical community and the government of Korea can cooperate in setting the global policy agenda for health care ODA based on concrete evidence-based healthcare policy research.

Purpose The study is a pioneer in investigating how intellectual capital (IC) affects environmental compliance among high-energy-consuming firms in Nigeria over 8 years (2016–2023). It provides empirical proof of how female directors affect the association between IC and environmental compliance in ensuring the attainment of sustainable development goals (SDGs 5, 9, 12 and 13). Design/methodology/approach The study obtained data from a sample of 86 listed non-financial firms. A content analysis technique was employed to compute energy and emissions disclosure indexes using Global Reporting Initiative standards from the sampled firms. The study used the generalized method of moments (GMM) econometric model to evaluate the direct effects of IC on firm environmental compliance. Panels corrected standard errors (HPCSE) and feasible generalized least squares (FGLS) regressions were used to establish the robustness of the GMM regression results. Findings The results found that human capital and relational capital have positive and significant associations with environmental compliance. The study documented that interactions between females on board and IC have influenced the association between human capital structure, relational capital and environmental compliance. Practical implications The study findings will contribute to achieving the SDGs in a broader context, as environmental sustainability is part of the areas aimed to be covered concerning innovation and infrastructure (SDG 9), responsible consumption and production (SDG 12) and climate change (SDG 13). Originality/value The study filled the identified gap by providing empirical evidence on how IC has influenced environmental compliance and how its interaction with females on the board improves sustainability.

The study is a pioneer in investigating how board diversity affects occupational health and safety disclosure in Nigeria by the selected nonfinancial companies for 7 years (2016–2022). It provides empirical proof of how environmental compliance affects the association between board diversity and occupational health and safety disclosure in ensuring the attainment of sustainable development goals. The study obtained data from a sample of 83 listed nonfinancial firms, and a content analysis technique was employed to compute emissions disclosure indexes using global reporting initiatives standards from the sampled firms. The study used the generalized method of moments (GMMs) econometric model to evaluate the direct effects of board diversity on firm occupational health and safety disclosure. Panels corrected standard errors (HPCSEs) and feasible least squares (FGLSs) regressions were used to establish the robustness of the GMM regression. The results found that board gender and board nationality have positive and significant associations with occupational health and safety disclosure. The study documented that interactions between board diversity and occupational health and safety disclosure have influenced the association between board gender, board nationality, board expertise and occupational health and safety disclosure. The findings could help policymakers and regulators in revising policies and regulations that can improve the ability of such attributes to make firms improve the level of reporting information. This is the first study that provides empirical evidence on how board gender and board nationality influence occupational health and safety disclosure and their interaction with environmental compliance improves sustainability.

This study explores the potentials of digital transformation for achieving the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with emphasis on SDG 4 and SDG 9 in Nigeria. The study adopts a conceptual approach, reviewing existing literature to explore the topic from various views of authors on the issue. It focuses on the contextual factors such as stakeholder input to the process of the implementation of digitalisation and SDGs 4 and 9 which focuses on educational development at all levels, industrial collaborations and improvements, respectively. The results indicate that digital transformation potentially enhances the attainment of SDGs 4 and 9, but this is mediated by the level of stakeholder commitment and e-governance performance. Part of the recommendation is the adoption of a multi-disciplinary approach to development-oriented digital transformation interventions for SDGs 4 and 9 in Nigeria, through a process of effective stakeholder engagement and transparent institutional signalling. The study draws research attention to the use of digital transformation for social development, especially in a developing economy such as Nigeria, to enhance the compendium of knowledge in the implementation of digital approach to the attainment of SDGs 4 and 9. It is also suggested for the government institutions to take further responsibility to provide a fair platform for the implementation of digital transformation and the attainment of SDGs 4 and 9 in Nigeria.