Beyond cherry-picking: aligning development actors and efforts for inclusive and effective governance of trade-offs and synergies between SDGs in East Africa

This project aims to support inclusive and effective SDG implementation in East Africa by addressing trade-offs and building synergies through better alignment between development actors and efforts at local, national, and international level. SDGs interact: achieving one goal depends on what happens to other goals. When actors cherry-pick individual SDGs or take initiatives that are not aligned with what others are doing, the comprehensive and transformative agenda of the SDG framework is undermined. Only when SDG implementation incorporates a variety of perspectives, including those of vulnerable and excluded groups, to build synergies and minimise trade-offs, can inclusiveness and effectiveness be ensured.

This project will analyse how governance mechanisms for cross-level and cross-sector alignment (including inter-departmental alignment, donor–recipient alignment, inter-donor alignment, and public–private alignment) can transform a fragmented SDG governance context into an inclusive and effective polycentric governance system that allows trade-offs to be addressed and synergies to be built between SDGs. The four mechanisms of cross-level and cross-sector alignment are supported by internationally accepted principles of effective development cooperation, such as Policy Coherence for Sustainable Development and Inclusive Public-Private Partnerships, but little is known about how alignment happens in practice.

In collaboration with our partners, the project will set up transdisciplinary research platforms around multi-level case studies in Ethiopia (on synergies and trade-offs with SDG15 – life on land), Kenya (on synergies and trade-offs with SDG2 – zero hunger), and Uganda (on synergies and trade-offs with SDG6 – clean water and sanitation). In doing so, the project will contribute to transforming a fragmented SDG governance regime, where isolated projects, negative side-effects, and duplication of efforts prevail, into an inclusive and effective polycentric governance regime, where development actors take account of one another and strive to coordinate efforts to address trade-offs and build synergies.