The Third Progress Report by Kenyan civil society, which The Youth Cafe is a vital member of, organizations is informed by how Kenyan civil society see their roles in the 2030 Agenda as implementors of sustainable development, the voices of the people who are likely to be left behind and the watchdogs of office holders.
Since 2017, Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) have been submitting progress reports to inform Kenya’s Voluntary National Review (VNR). It should be noted that the 2018 CSO VNR Report was not written simply because in 2017, Kenya adopted a biannual VNR reporting cycle. Hence the next CSO report was the 2019 CSO biannual status report on the progress of SDG implementation and review in Kenya.
Please note the following: 1. The 2017 CSO VNR report was structured to report on progress made in the period ending 2016, and the 2019 CSO VNR report was a biannual report looking at progress undertaken over 2017/2018. 2. This 2020 CSO VNR report picks up from the 2019 status report and incorporates the progress over 2019. 3. Importantly, all of the three reports referenced above mirror Government-led VNR processes, with leadership from the SDGs Kenya Forum and its members, and feeding into the government-led country VNR reports and processes since 2017.
This year (2020), Kenya will be reporting at the High- Level Political Forum under the theme ‘Accelerated action and transformative pathways: Realising the decade of action and delivery for sustainable development’. To inform this, Kenyan CSOs shared their views and experiences in implementing the 2030 Agenda including successes, challenges, gaps, alignment to national policies, support needs, plans for 2020 and recommendations for accelerating the implementation the SDGs. The report also dedicates a separate section on ‘leave no one behind’.
Therefore, apart from informing Kenya’s VNR 2020, the report provides recommendations to inform policy design and to strengthen partnerships particularly with the government and donors. However, a number of critiques have been levelled against country VNR processes in Africa; Kenya does feature in displaying these shortcomings. The most important one is that many countries (Kenya included) failed to capture information on allocation of resources to the realization of the SDGs – as captured in Kenya’s VNR Report of 2017 and the biannual report of 2017 (by either CSOs or the Government).
Despite this, political commitments by governments to the process of VNR reporting has been evident in most African countries (including Kenya). Depending on the context, they came up with models that ensured the SDG Agenda’s incorporation into their national frameworks. For example, Kenya’s Medium-Term Plan III (MTPII) reflects the 2030 Agenda and Agenda 2063 at the adoption phase.