Planning Minister Assistant initiates expanded consultation session on a project entitled (Enhancing national capabilities to monitor UN SDG 4 in Egypt)

Dr. Mona Essam, Assistant Minister of Planning and Economic Development for Sustainable Development Affairs initiated expanded consultation session on a project entitled (Enhancing national capabilities to monitor UN SDG 4 in Egypt) .

The consultation session is held in cooperation between the Ministry of Planning and Economic Development, UNESCO, and The UN Resident Coordinator office in Egypt.

The session witnessed the presence of Mary Anne Therese Manuson , Education Programme Specialist at UNESCO  and Mrs. Sally George, responsible for development coordination, data management, monitoring and evaluation of results at The UN Resident Coordinator Office.

During her speech, Dr. Mona Essam reviewed the steps of the project since its inception.

She said that in this regard a workshop was organized in cooperation between the Ministry of Planning and Economic Development and the United Nations Evaluation Group in 2019, with the participation of various national bodies, entitled “The Roadmap to Support Follow-up to the Sustainable Development Goals 2030.”

The aforementioned workshop discussed the situation at that time the frameworks for monitoring and evaluating indicators of the sustainable development goals, including SDG4 , the challenges related to the availability of data, its accuracy, and data gaps. 

She said that about two years ago, communication took place again between the ministry and the office of the United Nations Resident Representative in Cairo to discuss the completion of this cooperation. 

Dr. Mona Essam explained that the project includes a set of stages, the first of which is conducting desk research on the status of data in Egypt through reports and studies published in this regard. 

Then, virtual national consultations were organized in which all represented parties participated, where a draft was developed by UNESCO experts to analyze the situation. 

Dr. Mona Essam asserted the interest of the Sustainable Development Unit at the Ministry of Planning and Economic Development in the project “Enhancing national capabilities to monitor UN SDG 4 in Egypt) “as the beginning of a group of projects that will be carried out on the same approach. 

 Dr. Mona stressed the Ministry of Planning and Economic Development’s interest in preparing international and regional reports on the extent to which Egypt has achieved the goals of sustainable development and the African Agenda 2063. 

Egypt submitted three voluntary national reports (VNRs) to The high-level political forum on sustainable development in the years 2016, 2018 and 2021,according to Mona Essam.

Dr. Mona Essam confirmed that the Ministry of Planning and Economic Development relied primarily in preparing these reports on data issued by the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMS), in addition to official data issued by the relevant national authorities. 

Moreover, she explained that according to the Sustainable Development Goals Report for 2019, the number of indicators for which data were available in the UN SDG4 reached 4 indicators, while the number of available indicators increased to 7 indicators.