The project aims at enhancing the capacity of the target groups in the following selected countries in Africa: Angola, Namibia, Uganda and Zimbabwe to engage in constructive policy dialogues and/or participatory mechanisms, with a view to develop strategies and initiatives to advance inclusive development and SDG achievement for indigenous peoples in the framework of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Through capacity building of both national and local governments and indigenous leaders, the project aims to promote the participation of indigenous peoples in decision-making processes at all levels, with a special focus at the local level, where the most vulnerable indigenous peoples live. The project also intends to enhance the capacity of governments to develop and implement policies, programmes and legislation that recognize and respect indigenous peoples’ development priorities and rights, that include their full and effective participation in national socio-economic development policies, enhancing dialogue mechanisms among indigenous peoples, the government and UNCTs. The project also aims to strengthen the capacities of stakeholders in targeted countries to engage in those processes, as well as to work in the implementation of national action plans, policies and measures on the Declaration.

The overall objective of the project is to contribute to government capacity to effectively produce and use time-use data in policy formulation for the implementation of the 2030 Agenda in Africa, Latin America and Western Asia. More specifically, in collaboration with ECA, ECLAC and ESCWA, the project will contribute to building capacity in countries to produce and use time-use statistics, in support of measuring and monitoring their national development plans and indicators, including SDG 5.4.1 on unpaid work, as well as indicators on other development issues such as employment and learning. This will be achieved through the development and testing of methodological guidelines on how to modernize the collection, analysis and use of time-use data based on assessments of national capacity and needs in the following regions Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Western Asia (one project country per region). The resulting guidelines will cover cost-effective tools and a sustainable model to institutionalize the systematic collection of time-use data. As part of the rollout phase, the guidelines will be available for use by all countries and will be widely promoted through regional training workshops and national events in the project countries (one project country per region) to promote stronger collaboration between users and producers of time-use data where participants will also identify/map time-use data needs to national development policies. This way, the project will also contribute to improved data/policies integration.

The Data For Now initiative (Data4Now) aims to develop countries’ capacities to deliver the information needed by local and national policy and decision makers to achieve the 2030 Agenda and make a positive difference in people’s lives.  To this end, it supports members of the national statistical systems in participating countries to collaborate more effectively with local, national and global partners from intergovernmental organizations, academia, civil society and the private sector, in order to leverage innovative sources, technologies and methods for the streamlined production and dissemination of better, more timely and disaggregated data for sustainable development. The initiative, which was launched by UN Deputy-Secretary General Amina Mohammed on 25 September 2019 on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, seeks to enhance collaboration and promote synergies across increasingly complex data systems, supporting the mainstreaming of data innovations into official statistical production processes, including geospatial information, big data and other non-traditional data sources.  It is co-led by a core team consisting of the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD), the World Bank, the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data (GPSDD), and the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN). A set of eight trailblazer countries from 3 continents have already joined the initiative, namely: Bangladesh, Nepal, Mongolia, Paraguay, Colombia, Ghana, Rwanda and Senegal. Data4Now is about accelerating the sustainable use of robust new methods and innovative tools that improve the timeliness, coverage, and quality of SDG data through collaboration, partnerships and capacity development. It draws closely from the learnings of previous and ongoing work carried out by UNSD, the World Bank, GPSDD, and SDSN, and has been designed with inputs from government, civil society, academic and private sector partners.  An inception workshop of the Data4Now initiative was hosted by the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda, in Kigali, Rwanda, on 13-14 November 2019. In this inception workshop, funded jointly by the four core partners, representatives from national statistical systems in the eight trailblazer countries, as well as partners from the private sector, academia and international identified priority needs and deliverables, and explored possible partnerships and solutions around data, technology and methods with highest potential impact to attain those deliverables. Building on the outcome of the inception workshop, the UNSD, in close coordination with other Data4Now core partners, has developed a plan of action to build the capacity of Colombia and Senegal, two Data4Now trailblazer countries that are also priority target countries for the Italian development cooperation. This  plan of action foresees specific activities to support the collection, analysis and use of accurate, inclusive and up-to-date data for the SDGs on two priority themes identified by their respective national statistical system authorities, namely (1) measurement of poverty indicators among difficult-to-reach population groups, and (2) production of disaggregated and timely crop-yield estimates.