Providing leadership for the sustainable development of industry, innovation
infrastructure
and
Prof John Ouma-Mugabe
In September 2020, the world’s leaders met at the United Nations (UN) General Assembly to review progress on the implementation of the UN Agenda 2030 and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted five years ago. The UN General Assembly meeting took place in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic that shattered global geopolitical and economic systems in unprecedented ways.
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This pandemic has vividly exposed the structural and governance weaknesses of national health systems. To address the health crisis and related weaknesses in health infrastructure, declining economic growth, loss of employment and other challenges, governments around the world are increasingly investing in various forms of innovation, infrastructure and industrialisation or manufacturing activities, including the manufacture of personal protective equipment (PPE), ventilators for hospitals, masks and other health products. The interconnected nature of the SDGs, particularly between SDG 3 (Good Health and Wellbeing) and SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure), is demonstrated in the interventions that some countries are currently taking to handle the pandemic. Many African countries are directing their economic stimulus packages to small- and medium-scale enterprises to manufacture PPEs, masks and other products to be used for COVID-19 testing, tracing and treatment. Engineering faculties at universities throughout the world can play a critical role to support small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and governments to spur manufacturing, and advance the achievement of SDG 9 as a pathway to SDG 3, including banishing COVID-19, and developing pathways out of poverty (SDG 1). They are key sources of knowledge, information and skills that public organisations and private enterprises require to implement programmes for the implementation of the SDGs.
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