By 2030, Nigeria is expected to be among the countries that have absolutely or partially achieved all the 17 Goals of the Sustainable Development Goals, agreed on by business and political leaders some years after the inability of realising all the Millennium Development Goals. Nigeria is one of the countries that achieve less of the MDGs. This has been a great concern to academia and industry, including Ministries, Departments and Agencies that have the mandate of ensuring sustainable living for everyone.
Our analyst had earlier reported that businesses and scholars need to come together and work with the mindset of removing perenial frictions associated with organisation to organisation partnership in the past, especially industry and academia relationship. In furtherance of this proposition and our analyst’s quest of understanding happenings around SDGs, he was privileged to attend an online discussion, where Nigerian professionals from the industry, academia and civil society space discussed all the 17 SDGs.
Available information suggests that the discussion of the first 16 Goals resulted in spending almost 50 hours, allowing the professionals to raise issues and needs, and discussing them thoroughly. Week 17, which is just ended a few hours ago, allows the professionals to discuss SDG 17: Partnership for the Goals. This Goal sums all the mechanics and physics of Goal 1 to Goal 16. It challenges stakeholders on the primary place of strategic collaborations and partnerships in attaining the rest Goals.
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As the guest speaker of the week 17, Professor Nnamdi Madichie of the Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Akwa, dwelled on the key things stakeholders in industry and academia, including government must do before Nigeria realises all the Goals. He stressed the place of mutual understanding before and during partnership or collaboration formation.
Other professionals who spoke identified information asymmetry among the stakeholders. According to them, lack of data and effective information exchange are impacting forming strategic alliance and executing projects. It also emerged that stakeholders are having collective benefit conflicts. Some organisations want their stories to be told along with the projects being executed. Identifying and connecting different value propositions of the stakeholders also remain significant problems.
At the end of the discussion, participants agreed to forge ahead with the internal collaboration. For instance, participants who have existing projects on the realisation of the Goals or know individuals or organisations working towards attainment of the Goals were informed to connect with others or link such individuals or organisations with the participants.
