Harnessing ‘communities of practice’ for local development and advancing the Sustainable Development Goals

Abstract

ABSTRACT The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) seek to address some of the most critical contemporary global challenges in a 17-goal agenda, including poverty, inequality, global environmental and climate crises. Central to these goals is Goal 17, ‘Partnership for the SDGs’ which forms the core framework for implementation of SDGs across scale. After the first five years of implementation, remarkable progress has been recorded globally; however, significant gaps remain across world regions. For Goal 17, while lateral partnerships and sectoral collaborations have improved, there is little synergy at the local level especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Using the ‘communities of practice’ concept and reflecting on Ghana’s local development framework, this paper contributes to the ongoing discourse on how best to localize global goals, and discusses the relevance of collaboration at the local level in the implementation of SDGs. Our analyses show weak integration of the SDGs into Ghana’s local development structures and poor collaboration among actors at the local level. Given these findings, it is crucial to reprioritize SDG-17 in this last decade of the SDGs by mainstreaming the Goals into statutory local development structures while promoting collaboration and partnerships in ‘communities of practice’ at the local level – where implementation of development occurs.