Gaborone, 27 September 2022 (ECA) - The Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) holds an applied training workshop on the Integrated Planning and Reporting Toolkit (IPRT) in Gaborone, Botswana from 26 to 29 September 2022. The four-day event is organized by the ECA's Development Planning Section located in the Macroeconomics and Governance Division, and the Sub-regional Office for Southern Africa, in collaboration with the National Planning Commission of Botswana.
The main objective of the IPRT training is to inform Member States about the functionalities of the toolkit and how to utilize it in the planning and alignment of the 2030 Agenda and Agenda 2063 with national development plans; including the concomitant monitoring of the progress of the two agendas towards their implementation.
Moremi Moremi, Director of Population and Sustainable Development within the National Planning Commission of Botswana explained that whilst the country has made an effort to mainstream the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into national development frameworks, the integration of Agenda 2063 has fallen behind. It is, for this reason, the government of Botswana approached the ECA to request capacity building on the functionalities of the IPRT.
Speaking about the value of the toolkit Mr. Moremi states “with the goals, targets and indicators of the two Agendas already in-built into the IPRT software, users can visually assess the level and strength of alignment between the two Agendas at the click of a button.”
Mr. Moremi also noted the training comes at a time when the newly established National Planning Commission of Botswana is working on the process of developing their new National Development Plan (NPD 12) and evaluating their current National Development Plan (NDP 11) ending in March 2023. Thus, the IPRT can be utilized to ensure the alignment of Agenda 2030 and Agenda 2063 with the upcoming plan as well as assessing the current plan and ensure the lessons learned will inform the upcoming plan.
Whilst delivering opening remarks, Chief of the Development Planning Section of the Macroeconomics and Governance Division at ECA, Bartholomew Armah highlighted the importance of the IPRT training for Botswana's planning initiatives and priorities stating “This training offers a unique opportunity to further strengthen development planning capacities of Botswana and critically evaluate the performance of their current National Development Plan, in terms of its alignment with continental and global commitments and in terms of performance against the plan’s own targets. The findings of this exercise can also inform the design of the next plan and facilitate improvements.”
This four-day event is a follow-up of two preparatory training sessions on the IPRT organized by the ECA in collaboration with the National Planning Commission of Botswana from 1 to 4 November 2021 and 1 to 5 August 2022. These workshops entailed the training of statisticians, planners, monitoring and evaluation experts from the various ministries as well as team establishment and access to the IPRT system.
Issued by:
Communications Section
Economic Commission for Africa
PO Box 3001
Addis Ababa
Ethiopia
Tel: +251 11 551 5826
E-mail: eca-info@un.org