 I think we'll probably just get started in a couple of minutes. It looks like things are just getting set up. Welcome everyone. My name is Ibtula Moth Karubi. I'm with the Sustainable Development Solutions Network Secretariat. Very happy to welcome you all to the official launch of our Uganda chapter. Prof Sabiti was my first contact at Macquarie University and helped to guide our initial discussions. I'm so glad you're able to join us, Professor. Good afternoon all. Thank you for joining us for this launch of the SDSN Uganda National Network. We are still sorting out a few things. Just give us five minutes and then we'll be able to start. Thank you. We are happy to be with you at this launch. Thank you very much for accepting our invitation and participating in this event. And also thank you very much for being enthusiastic and being partners in the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals. In this launch meeting, we will learn more about SDSN activities at the global level and at the national level. And so the purpose of this launch event is first of all to introduce to you the national network of SDSN, but also to tell you what our objectives are and what we aim to achieve and our vision of success and mobilize all of you and your organizations to participate in this network, but also to participate in the implementation and achievement of the Sustainable Goals, contributing to Uganda to achieve these goals, but also globally. But also to really emphasize the role of universities and non-state actors in the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals. So this network was accepted by the Global SDSN in November 2019 and we had hoped to launch it last year to be a physical meeting where we do a lot of interaction and networking, but due to the COVID-19 restrictions, pandemic restrictions, this couldn't happen. And we all, like you, in this uncertainty and hoped that it would end soon so that we have a physical meeting. But now we have to accept the new normal and have it online. And we will for the time being be interacting online and hopefully if the situation improves as we go along, then we will be able to meet physically. Without taking a lot of time, we are about 10 minutes into the time of the meeting. Apologies network issues were not working well and we had to sort them. So apologies. We are learning, of course, in the process and we hope to perfection this and do better next time. So with us, we have a number of participants who have joined from the Global SDSN. I have seen Maria and Eve who are our managers at the Global SDSN joining. We have representatives from the government of Uganda in the office of the Prime Minister where the Sustainable Department goals are coordinated from. And we have member universities represented society. And more importantly, the youth, the SDSN youth members and students. So we are glad that we have that diversity of participants. And without taking more time, I would like to invite our Deputy Principal, Professor Gorete Nawanoga, who is standing in for the Principal, Professor Bernard Barshasha, but also for herself, because she's quite enthusiastic about sustainable development goals. Professor Gorete Nawanoga is a Professor of community forestry and is interested in agenda issues and SDGs. And so Professor Gorete Nawanoga will welcome you to open this meeting officially. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Dr. Levy. I hope you can hear me loud and clear. Very well. Okay. Thank you very much for your kind words. The President, SDSN, Professor Jeffrey Sarge, the Vice Chancellor of Macquarie University, Professor Nawanwa, the representative of the OPM SDGs Secretariat, members of the Global SDSN and SDSN Uganda, invited guests, the key speakers, sponsors, colleagues from Macquarie University, distinguished participants, ladies and gentlemen. A very good afternoon to you all, our cherished participants. I bring you greetings from Macquarie University's College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences. Welcome to yet another milestone in the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences. As we witness the launch of the Sustainable Development Solutions Uganda National Network, organized by the Global SDSN and SDSN Uganda in collaboration with CAYES and Macquarie University Center for Climate Change, Research and Innovations. In a special way, I will come and equally thank the Global UN SDSN for choosing Macquarie University to host the SDSN Uganda National Network and for collaborating with the National Network to organize this launch. We don't take these for granted. Distinguished guests, allow me to salute the staff of CAYES led by Professor Ellie Sabiti and Dr. Lev Trinomhanji, who championed the crusade for the university to join the SDS Network following the UN call in July 2017. You too continue to make us proud. Special gratitude goes to the great Macquarie University management led by a four-sided leader, none other than Professor Banabas Nawangwe, for the buy-in and support for this initiative. I am delighted to report that the SDSN Uganda Secretariat is hosted at Macquarie University Center for Climate Change Research and Innovations, a semi-autonomous unit in the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences. MOKRI was launched in 2013 to enhance climate change knowledge generation and dissemination, a challenge we diligently embraced. The Center engages in training, research and policy interventions. Through MOKRI, Macquarie University brings together researchers and scientists from within and outside the university, government officials, civil society and private sector actors to collaboratively and locally address climate change, share information and solve problems relating to adaptation technologies and research. The College is also using MOKRI as a vehicle to improve and support undergraduate, graduate, diploma and postgraduate education in climatic sciences, as well as in meteorology, climate change adaptation and mitigation. The Center therefore contributes greatly to the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal Number 13 on climate action and greatly speaks to the Uganda's National Development Plan 3 and its Development Agenda 2040. I am excited to note that the theme of today's launch event, unlocking the potential of universities and other non-state actors to foster achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals, is in line with the Global Development and Climate Change Agenda agreed upon by world leaders to foster sustainable development and build resilient societies. I am informed that the SDS and Uganda will focus on six thematic areas, agriculture and food security, improved health, natural resources and ecosystems, renewable energy efficiency, sustainable cities and climate change, not forgetting gender equality and equity as precutting themes. Makeru University is well positioned to spearhead this process, given that we have a fully-fledged College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences, a College of Health Sciences, a College of Engineering and Technology, a School of Economics, a School of Women and Gender Studies and we are looking forward to partnering with institutions with similar agenda to promote gender responsive achievements of the Sustainable Gold Target under these themes. This will be achieved through training, research, innovations, community engagement, capacity building and working with government, specifically with the Office of the Prime Minister, Secretariat on Sustainable Development Goals. It is my sincere anticipation that through the SDSN forum, you will explore how to unlock sustainable agroindustrialization to respond to the pressing socioeconomic and development priorities of food security, wealth, job creation and expansion of the macroeconomic growth through country-owned processes. I therefore call upon you all here present to be the ambassadors of hope and support this Sustainable Development Solution Network Baby in Uganda to fulfill its noble mandate on behalf of the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences Management. I do reaffirm that Sustainable Development Solutions Network Uganda will continue to bring together SDSN members in the country to identify, develop, implement transformative solutions for sustainable development. We shall mobilize universities, research and knowledge centers, civil society, private sector and spatial interest groups to promote the achievement of the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. Distinguished participants, it is now my singular honor and privilege to declare the SDSN launch ceremony officially opened. As we build for the future, for God and my country, I thank you all. Thank you very much, Professor Goretti Namanoga, for those very good introductory remarks. And I'm very much aware that you were part of the discussions that initiated SDSN Uganda when it was still being done by my predecessor, Professor Ed Sabiti, and you heard the meetings with Eve from the Global SDSN. Now it is my pleasure to welcome the Vice President of the SDSN in the Church of Networks, Maria Cortes. Push, I hope I pronounce the names quite very well. Maria Cortes is the Vice President of Networks of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, which she joined in 2013. Prior to joining the SDSN, Maria worked for UNESCO at the Science, Policy and Sustainable Development Division. Previously, she coordinated the European Energy and Transport programs at the Polytechnic University in Madrid, Spain, and worked for two years at the Spanish Office for Science and Technology in Brussels, analyzing EU policies for international cooperation, transport and energy. Maria holds a master's degree in international affairs from Columbia University, the Fulbright Scholar and the Bachelor of Science and Masters of Science Degrees in Physics from the Comprutense University in Madrid. She lives in Madrid with her family. Welcome Maria to SDSN Uganda. We are imagining that you are from Uganda. Maybe you will do once this pandemic uncertainty is over. But before I welcome you to address the participants, I want to recognize that the Vice Chancellor, our Vice Chancellor, Professor Banabas Nawanwe, has already joined the meeting and he gladly accepted the hosting of SDSN by Mercury University. He will be closing our meeting so we will have a chance to talk to us. So Maria please, it's now your time to address the participants who are eagerly waiting for your wise words. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for the invitation. SDSN is absolutely honored and thrilled to have Mercury University hosting this very important network. And indeed we all hope that we will be able to have an in-person meeting soon enough in Uganda. I think a number of our colleagues, Professor Sacks Included, are very, very keen on visiting the country as soon as it's possible. Let me thank the Vice Chancellor as well as the Deputy Principal, Dr. Rebo. These have been intense months of work and it's really the best-case scenario for SDSN to have a university with the prestige and the standing of Makere hosting the network. So I've been asked to speak briefly about SDSN and the networks. What do the networks do? What are some of the key priorities? So I'll take a few minutes on these. SDSN was launched in 2012 under the auspices of the Secretary-General. This was the time where we didn't yet have sustainable development goals but they were being designed, they were being discussed. And the Secretary-General of the UN at that time thought that this was the biggest challenge of our lifetime and therefore we needed academia, we needed the brightest minds and the most sophisticated and knowledgeable institutions to be a part of the debate, to help us diagnose the challenge, come up with complex solutions and solutions that would incorporate different sectors of society and different groups and academia and universities specifically were the best place to do this. So since then SDSN has been mobilizing academia around the world. We currently have 1,400 member institutions from around the world of which about 75% of them are universities and the rest are research centers, think tanks or knowledge producing NGOs. How do we organize all of these member institutions precisely through our national and regional networks? Our national and regional networks are typically hosted by one or two universities that convene universities from that country in support of the sustainable development goals. We typically say that our networks have four priorities. The first priority is to localize the SDGs and with this we mean think through what does this agenda mean for my specific country or my region? What are some of the challenges that are very unique to us that we will be facing in this agenda and what are some of the opportunities? What are key data that we need to gather to understand whether or not we're making the right progress? So the way our networks work is that they work with their governments in defining implementation strategies for the SDGs. They work with national statistical offices with municipalities and so to understand data questions and they host multi-stakeholder workshops to discuss and to bring to the table different sectors, unions, civil society and so to discuss all of these plans and make sure at all times that we're not leaving anyone behind. Our networks also focused on high quality education on sustainable development. SDSN has a very large SDG academy with a number of MOOCs that can be accessed by everyone but our networks also do a number of activities like for example summer programs on sustainable development or executive trainings with the private sector. They also think through how does the curriculum need to evolve to make sure that everyone that comes out of a university knows the very basic principles of sustainable development regardless of if they're going to be a doctor, a lawyer or a botanical specialist. Finally our networks work on what we call the sustainable development goal, sorry the sustainable solution initiatives. Solution initiatives are typically worked with the private sector and sometimes with different levels of government and they are practical solutions for very specific and very unique problems. Our networks conduct what we call the long-term pathways for sustainable development so these would be typically very very technical exercises modeling whether or not the goals are possible to achieve and what are the avenues and what are the specific trajectories to achieve the goals in that country and while this is a technical exercise our networks always bring once again civil society sectors of the industry as well as the government in a highly iterative process to make sure that the model takes into consideration the realities of the country that once again it's not leaving any specific vulnerable group behind and that creates consensus in society. This is more or less the work program for our networks and all of this is done once again mobilizing academia working always with the government and with the private sector. We have 41 networks right now that cover 120 different countries around the world and one of the great things about our networks is that they have each other so the SDS in Uganda will be working closely with SDS in Canada and with SDS in Japan and learning from each other and sharing projects and opportunities. Our networks also have direct tasks access to SDSN and to our work so for example in September we launched a new guide called Accelerating Education for the SDGC University that was redacted with enormous participation from universities from around the world and in fact we currently have an open call for case studies so if your university is using a very innovative method to teach the SDGs or mainstreaming the SDGs across the university we want to hear about it so go to our website and please submit your case study and our networks also get to use our outputs and everything that SDSN produces first-handedly. Just to conclude let me say a couple of words about SDSN Uganda. We've heard from Professor Goretti Navanova already all the great work that Makarete is doing and has been doing for the past well for many decades in fact in terms of education and research in the areas that we are so worried and so keen to to to work on. SDSN Uganda was indeed scheduled to launch physically last year it could not happen but it doesn't matter because we're doing an online launch we will meet soon enough in person and in the meantime SDSN Uganda has managed to already set up a number of priorities to work in which sometimes takes a year to for a network to decide it has already established a collaborative relationship with the government of Uganda specifically with the SDG coordination task force at the prime minister's office and also it has advised the UN resident coordinator office and UNDP on the design of the UN sustainable development cooperation framework for Uganda for the next four years so this is I don't think we can call this network a baby anymore I think this is already standing up child and we are really eager to see what comes next and we stand ready to support the phenomenal work that Makarete and the SDSN Uganda surely will be doing in the next few years thank you very much Maria for those exciting words and with a lot of information on the global SDSN network I hope now members are trying to understand what SDSN Uganda has joined and I want to thank you very much for supporting SDSN Uganda to be able to operationalized to be able to be operationalized and putting in place a secretariat of course with the support of the university and the college I will Maria has introduced the international network the global SDSN it's now my pleasure to introduce to you what SDSN Uganda is all about and what it will be doing over the next few years allow me to share my screen mine is a presentation so allow me to share a screen thank you Juma for assisting me to share screens sometimes you think you you know some of these things and then you find that you don't know actually a lot can you see my screen good so the presentation is about SDSN Uganda or sustainable development solutions network Uganda it is an introductory presentation so basically the next slide please Maria has already talked about the global SDSN which is led by Professor Jeffery Sash who is who will be talking to us later and it operates under the auspices of the UN Secretary General since 2012 it mobilizes scientific and technical expertise from the academia from the civil society from the private sector next so our network was approved by the network strategy council of the UN SDSN in November 2019 we have already talked about it and it appointed Makiri University to host the national network and this appointment was accepted by the vice chancellor we are glad about this it is coordinated under the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences and the Secretariat is in the Makiri University Center for Climate Change Research and Innovations which I coordinate and that was established in 2013 as as the Deputy Principal has already said so what is our vision we are looking at mobilizing universities research and knowledge centers the civil society the private sector and even communities and other special groups special interest groups to be able to identify and implement transformative solutions to achieve the 2030 sustainable development agenda and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change so we are conversant that it is not only the role of the state to implement the SDGs but it needs support from other non-state actors that include universities and knowledge centers our objective is to build awareness and knowledge on SDGs yes we know that SDGs are already integrated in our national development agenda but quite a number of actors may not be aware about these SDGs we also look at conducting research on sustainable development solutions and the whole issue is that for you to be able to implement appropriate solutions you need evidence best and this comes from research and our universities are one of the most sustainable institutions that have been on for hundreds of years and Makiri University is now 100 years so it will play a big role we look at building partnerships and conducting map-staker dialogues advice give advice and dialogues on policy and decision making but importantly support youth network we know that the future of our growth the future of our countries is in the hands of the youth and the children when we are long gone and we need to set up a platform for them so basically we are looking at the SDGs and their 17 SDGs I think so when we talk about building awareness of the SDGs how are we going to do it we look at supporting SDSN in the production and dissemination of reports both global reports and African reports indexed to reports which have been participating in the last year and SDSN we are glad has been leading on this but also deliver short-term and professional trainings in the universities Makiri University and other member universities and then support the participation in online education programs especially the SDG academy and of course supporting experiential learning I just got this extract from the current Africa SDG index report that was produced by SDSN with support from other partners and there it highlights the journey where Uganda has reached all the progress of Uganda in terms of achieving SDG's targets and you can see that we are doing very well on climate action but the other SDGs are SDG12467 we are having some bit of steady progress but the other SDGs we have not yet done quite very well so this is just to interest you to read this report and see where we are on sustainable solutions which Maria has already talked about we are looking at much disciplinary research to generate evidence best for informing the implementation and achievement of SDGs on partnerships we are looking at creating a partnership for dialogues and already we have this network which is a platform it will create thinking spaces for the academia for the think tanks for government for researchers but we work very closely with the SDG secretariat at the office of the prime minister where we have already started the collaboration we support dialogues and provide advice on policy providing evidence best for government decision makers and finally on this is the empowerment of youth we want we are looking at creating a youth wing as faculty in a university we are always dealing with the youth and of course creating the youth empowerment has marked for benefits it is catalytic because it goes into the future so we want to really educate the young people about SDGs connect the young people to global networks and support the young people in developing and scaling innovative solutions next already in Uganda we have approved the SDSN members the application to become a member of SDSN is done globally and then what is approved and then you become a member and now these members will be the core of SDSN Uganda so we have Makeda University which is hosting SDSN Makeda University is already a member and we have had interactions during the setup of this national network Uganda Christian University the National Coffee Research Institute part of NALO, Barara University of Southern Technology the Africa Climate Change Leadership Program Uganda Technology and Management University and the School of Hygiene Marriage so you can see that it is not only a member membership of universities but other knowledge centers a civil society and think tanks and we have had discussions with the potential members they are not yet members they will submit applications in UCOS, Kawhi University, Chabogo University, Ustema University, Makeda University Business School, the Economic Policy Research Center, Agakani University, Kampara International University and Bishop Steward University so the vital role of universities really Maria talked about them and I don't need to go again through them so our thematic focus we have basically six thematic areas that we'll be working on and then one that is cross-cutting agriculture and food systems in support of SDGs one and two, ending poverty and hunger, improving health that is SDG three, natural resources and ecosystem health in support of SDG six and fifteen, renew our energy and energy efficiency to end the energy poverty which is SDG seven, sustainable cities to help resilient and sustainable cities SDG eleven and also important to the climate change climate compatible development and then we have gender equality and responsiveness being a cross-cutting issue in all of the six. So what has been achieved so far we already have a fully functional secretariat in place we have a website which is live and functional, we have engaged members, we have started engaging government, we participate in the coordination meetings and the work is in the progress to set up a leadership and governance council. Next steps, we are looking at setting up again the National Leadership Council, our first priorities and activities, continued recruiting members and partners, organized solutions conference and above all mobilized resources to do all this work. On the governance and organization we know that McKenna University is the host, the top organ is the leadership council which will be a composite of 10 to 14 eminent persons in Uganda and then the secretariat as we say is already at work. So the criteria for creating membership we look at members who are good at engagement, they provide the substance, they have a good reputation, a good experience to contribute resources but we also look at private sector and other public institutions and other networks. I want to thank you all for listening to me. I would like to take this now opportunity that the next on the agenda are the keynote addresses and I would like to hand over to Rita Namisango to modulate the next session. Rita Namisango is the university, McKenna University's senior public relations officer. Rita over to you. Thank you very much Revo for the good work. Yes with respect to time we have a high-level opening panel which have been requested to moderate but I'll not go into the details of introducing the panelists because we have an issue with time. As per our program we have Dr. Albert Yamgisha, the senior technical advisor SDGs, secretariat office of the prime minister Uganda. That is great because that includes the involvement of government. We also have Sam Maballa, the country director city's alliance Uganda and for each panelist we'll have 10 minutes and after the 10 minutes I'll request all the participants online to hold it. We'll listen to the keynote address and thereafter we'll have a question and answer session. So what I'm going to request is that when the panelists are presenting, kindly go to the chat. If you have any issues you would like them to respond to, I'll be capturing what is in the chat. Allow me to welcome Dr. Albert Yamgisha, one of our panelists, the senior technical advisor SDGs secretariat office of the prime minister Uganda. Thank you Leader. Are you hearing me? Hello? Are you hearing me? Yes we can hear you. I can hear you. Yes I have a PowerPoint presentation. Let me see if I can find it but rave you can show it. Otherwise as he's looking for it, my name is Albert Yamgisha. I am the senior technical advisor on sustainable development goals and head of the SDGs secretariat located at the office of the prime minister. I have the pleasure to thank the organizers for inviting the office of the prime minister to participate and speak at the launch of the Sustainable Development Solution Network at Uganda and since the focus of SDSN is in the implementation of sustainable development goals, privileged to be a part of this launch and will be representing the office of the prime minister and his government of Uganda. Briefly, of course, if you can move fast to the next slide. My presentation, of course, I will give a snapshot of Uganda's journey, then sustainable development coordination framework, policy frameworks and development financing, generating evidence, then give a snapshot of government programs and then possibly areas for possible collaboration. But of course you have given me 10 minutes and remember the focus of SDSN in Uganda is on SDGs. So it's important that from the word you go, we look at Uganda's journey since the inception of SDGs. And I will just present the journey looking at three dimensions. The first one starting from down politically, the SDGs were endorsed in 2015 and adopted in 2016. And during that time, Uganda was a front runner because Uganda held the presidency of the General Assembly during that time. And Uganda prepared the first voluntary national report 2016, which indicated that out of the 169 targets, Uganda, of course, had covered 70 percent, which in our national development plan, too. Then we have a dedicated minister in the chart of SDGs and recent last year, Uganda prepared the second voluntary national report and organizationally, of course, the government has developed a coordination framework, which I will talk about it on how implement SDGs to operationalize it. We have the roadmap, which was developed in 2018 and we are cooperating with different stakeholders, making sure that no one is left behind and recently we signed an MOU with SDGs, with CSOs. And of course, in 2016, we developed a framework, which is fully functional at the office of the Prime Minister, with the regate to the general duties, who is in charge of SDGs. The SDG Secretary has been established with full support of development partners, especially as the UN system supports a coordination function and all of them technical working groups are functioning cohesively to address different aspects of the SDGs. The framework has been operationalized through the SDG roadmap, which was established in 2018 and aligned with NDP2, now of course with National Development Plan 3. And this is a national coordination arrangement framework, which is used in its implementation of SDGs. The first one is a policy coordination committee, which is chaired by the Prime Minister himself and members and ministers, Deputy Ministers, Heads of Corporations and Agencies. Then down we have implementation steering committee chaired by the Heads of Public Service, and members include all the permanent Secretaries, Heads of Missions, Corporational Agencies. And down it we have the National SDG Task Force, which is chaired by the permanent Secretary of the Prime Minister and it is attended by chairperson of the technical working groups, which I'm showing down there. We have five technical working groups. The first one is monitoring and reporting on the SDGs chaired by office of the Prime Minister. The second one is planning and ministering technical working groups chaired by National Planning Authority. And the side one is the source mobilization and financing technical working group chaired by Minister of Finance. And the first one is data aspects. Everything to do with data is chaired by Uganda Bureau of Statistics. And the last one is communication and properization of a technical working group of the National Development Goals. So here SDSN was looking for collaboration with the SDG Secretary of the Office of the Prime Minister. And I can tell you right away that you are most welcome and you will be participating in those working groups. So next side of course this one talks about the Minister for SDGs, what she's supposed to be doing, and then down is the Secretariat, the Laws and Responsibilities, which are very clear, you can read them, but most importantly still in the coordination function of SDGs. Now the National Planning frameworks have been accommodative over the 2030 agenda and the Government of Uganda is well positioned for field ambition to achieve with the vision 2040 and establish a planning framework, which is robust, they even show national development plans. We have now a national development plan for five years, which goes to increase average household incomes and improve quality of life. And it effectively delivers the national vision. The National Development Plan series in the past emphasizes the need to identify and utilize the new and tabulated innovative financing options in the public and private sector to identify development opportunities, which Rev was talking about advancing a mechanism for fully aligning the plan, the budget and NDPC results and reporting frameworks, and then it's chosen in public investment management. Next, the Government of Uganda has demonstrated commitment to align financing to development platforms. One, government issues, administrative compliance, gauging the level of alignment of the budget national development plans. And of course so far there have been an improvement from 54 percent, 60 percent from 2017, so 18, 2019. Government has issued a general equity compliance certificate to mainstream as a precondition for budget appropriation. The third one is government has commenced implementation of the program best budgeting and then how they comprehensive public financing management reform strategy from 2018 to 2017, which was developed. And of course this one will enhance resource mobilization and improving planning and public investment management. There are efforts in the partnerships with the UN system to develop and implement an integrated financing framework for strengthening a complementary, independent and mutually effective. Now government continues to build evidence to guide the planning. And as this one here we support from UNDP, we undertook an assessment of the police and institutional gaps in SDG implementation. We also undertook a network on specific SDGs for zero-hung SDG 2 and ZNPIS justice and for SDG 16 to inform planning and the strategic review of SDG 2. We have developed an integrated SDG model for Uganda. Through the model of course we have three categories of interventions as SDG accelerators. And these ones include environment, governance and industry. And I'm happy to note that of course in SDSN you are focusing also on the environment climate change. So we already have it as one of the key accelerators. Next. So government together with development partners and stakeholders have initiated the actions and strategies of engagement and implementation such as integrating SDGs into all our national development and statistical indicator framework, integration of SDGs into the national MLE strategy, formed a youth coalition for SDGs initiative for youth engagement. At the secretariat we have a section for the youth and we have formed a youth coalition where we expect to have one million youth for one million solutions. So already since you are also engaging with the youth, we already have a coalition for that. Then there is a localization of SDGs in two districts and local government plans and conducting voluntary local reviews in local governments which we have started working towards the better engagement of the private sector, through establishment of the private sector platform. On 1st May the prime minister will be launching the private sector platform and the mercury university will be invited. Then we have also a polarization of SDGs through media companies and production of IC materials. Tracking SDGs through Uganda's Voluntary National Report which we did last year, Uganda participated at the high-level political forum in July last year and this is a minister now delivering Uganda's report to the UN High-Level Political Forum and overall on SDG progress according to the development solutions in Etowoc. Uganda is more than 50% of the way towards achieving SDGs by 2030 as indicated by the solutions network. In the 52 African countries, Uganda ranked 18th position with overall score of 54.8 and with Africa on 52.7 and based on our Voluntary National Report of last year, Uganda has made good progress on all the SDGs with several policies and strategies facilitated SDG implementation and the key of them which I want to share with you are one, social protection programs for women, youth and elderly, the other one is job creation and youth empowerment, then establishment of UPE and universal primary education and universal second education, the other one is gender equality and women empowerment and another achievement is refugee policy. Uganda I think is the African country with the highest number of refugees, more than 1.4 million. Then we have special programs like Rosa and Uganda support a fund and then development initiative for Rosa and Uganda. We have the regional economic empowerment programs. We have saving mother giving life initiatives and then rural education programs, our climate action interventions, however Uganda needed of course to fast track her efforts as indicated in the dashboard for SDGs 1, 2, 4, 6, 7 and the key recommendation is of course of the VNR report produced last year that we are going to focus on in the next decade in the next year as include stronger partnerships, coordination and collaboration and we can see this one as one of the ways of coordinating and collaborating with stakeholders. So already you are welcome, the second one is deeper localization and properization of the SDGs. Dr. Albert please for four minutes. Just told it and to all the participants kindly ensure that you if you have questions for Dr. Albert please type the questions via chat. Thank you. So that's when we exclude the time you have multiplied here. We have six recommendations as indicated there promoting SDFocus innovations, focusing on SDGs and then especially data monitoring and reporting. Next possible areas of partnerships of course SDGs research to build a knowledge base for the secretariat hub. Government has developed a secretariat hub which is now going to be a convergence center for SDGs and this is why now the SDNS definitely will be operating from since now we are forming a partnership and creating awareness on SDGs through policy dialogues of course where we shall be having sync tack discussion that is very important then working together with UN is identifying promotional practical solutions and of course contributing to SDG publications and also receiving publications from the SDG and of course I talked about leaving no one behind where we signed the name we will receive a start organizations. Thank you very much for listening to me. Wow I like thank you very much and on behalf of all the participants I'm glad that you ended with the Tunde Kamavega drive that's nice leaving no one behind but I've also picked the idea of the youth collision one million youth and at Marquere University and all other universities we have youth so we'll be able to follow that up now to all the participants you've listened to thank you very much to all the participants you've listened to Dr Albert and I'm requesting that please go to the chat room and ask some questions we'll follow that later now I have a slight because we are we have an issue with time a slight adjustment in the program I humbly request one of our panelists that is Mr Sam Maballa that was our next panelist and he's already online he's been participating I've seen him among the participants to bear with me so that the keynote the keynote speaker Professor Jeff research speaks and thereafter we'll go back to Samuel Maballa and listen to him it's because the keynote speaker in terms of time has another engagement so I humbly request our panelists to remain participating and all the participants make please ensure that you go to the chat and ask some questions that you'd like the panelists to respond to and allow me to adjust the program and ensure that we listen to the keynote speaker and as per our program the keynote speaker is Professor Jeff research who is already online our keynote speaker is a university professor and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University he's president of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and a commissioner of the UN Broadband Commission for Development such has been advisor to three United Nations secretaries general and currently Professor Jeffery serves as an SDG advocate and a secretary general Antonio stress such was trice named among the time magazine's 100 most influential world leaders so we are honored that we are going to listen to a person a personality an individual a professor who was trice named among the time magazine's 100 most influential world leaders and was ranked by the economist among the top three most influential living economists and allow me to invite Professor Jeffery and Professor Jeffery I know that you've been participating and following and you've seen the participants but just to also inform you that the vice chancellor of mercury university Professor Bernabas Nawangwe is online and participating you're welcome thank you thank you so much to speak to us thank you so much for the lovely introduction and thanks to Macquarie University and vice chancellor for your leadership and for hosting the SDSN Uganda and thanks to the senior government officials for their presentations and their emphasis on how the sustainable development goals are being integrated into Uganda's planning process and its vision process it remains for me to emphasize how we would like to work with you and to help you in the challenges ahead to accelerate progress to achieving the sustainable development goals I think the path ahead for Uganda is a very challenging one because Uganda faces many many development challenges and opportunities and we would like to brainstorm with you and strategize with you both in the government and in the academic sector and in the business community to find ways to accelerate the progress I think the SDGs are most useful as a reference point to understand where the big gaps in development occur and therefore where the big mobilization of energy and resources and creativity and strategy should lie and when we look at the situation in Uganda we clearly see some very important priorities that I would like us to address for me perhaps the number one priority is SDG number four which is universal access to quality education I mention this because I believe that education is the single every person had access to quality internet then we could expand online education we could expand telemedicine we could expand government services we could expand technical training we could expand e-payment services we could expand environmental management and environmental supervision we could expand the data systems tremendously so I believe that in addition to universal education we should be aiming very rapidly for universal access to digital services including broadband wireless and the appliances or the tools that are needed to use these services I know that in both of these cases there are significant financial constraints and we need to think how development financing can help the government of Uganda to mobilize the resources and how the private sector and how the international tech companies and the telecoms companies can help to mobilize the investments needed to achieve these two goals if we could achieve universal digital access I think it would be much easier to achieve SDG number three which is universal healthcare coverage because there's now plenty of experience of using telemedicine as a powerful way to expand access to healthcare now it's possible to diagnose patients from a distance to read x-rays from a distance to monitor symptoms from a distance and so forth and I believe that if we use the digital platform we could tremendously expand the access to medicine and healthcare as well of course this raises yet another challenge because they're interconnected and that's the challenge of mass electrification because we need electricity in the villages and in the cities in order to power a digital network and the digital appliances and still far too few households and villages have modern electricity services and this raises the question of renewable energy in Uganda there is of course a tremendous potential for solar power as a major instrument for mass electrification on micro grids mini grids and even grid scale at the national level through solar power and this is an area I believe also where financing can make a huge difference households can pay for energy services but not the upfront investment costs of solar panels and wiring and systems but they can pay over time small amounts per month to cover the costs of electricity services and we have developed such micro grids actually in Uganda in Ruhira and other parts of Uganda precisely to show that it's possible to have the commercial enterprises using the micro grid approach this I think should be tremendously expanded I want to raise a question also about the energy strategy in Uganda because I know that there are major plans just announced in fact for the development of the oil sector I must say I am rather doubtful about this because it seems to me that it is running against the global trend which is to end the use of oil coal and natural gas not to expand the use of oil coal and natural gas I know that there are high hopes for developing Uganda as a oil exporting country but I'm a little bit skeptical I have to say with friends because the expenses will be very high the petroleum is as you know very waxy and expensive to transmit the pipeline goes through many ecologically sensitive regions and through villages the dangers of oil spills are very high and I don't think the returns are going to be very good if we look ahead for 20 years so I raise this because I believe in renewable energy and distributed solar power much more than I believe in big oil and gas pipelines especially because the world is moving to electric vehicles and to decarbonization of energy so this project seems to me to run against the direction of the global marketplace and I worry that it will become a stranded asset in the future not really a development opportunity so I hope that this is something that also can be analyzed and studied because I think it is important and it's important for another reason as well Uganda is an absolutely beautiful country and with wonderful ecosystems and wonderful biodiversity and of course we treasure the beauty of Uganda and Lake Victoria and all of the remarkable ecosystems of the country and of the great biodiversity which is a great resource for the country and also a great resource for tourism but it needs to be taken of course with very good care and it's under a lot of pressure all of the ecosystems of Uganda are under a lot of pressure and this is a major focus of SDGs 14 and 15 the stewardship and protection of the ecosystems Uganda's population has been growing very very rapidly as you know there are now about 45 million people in Uganda in 1950 only five million so increase of almost 10 times and the population continues to grow rapidly and the pressures on the ecosystems continue to be very great and big projects like the oil pipeline are also threats to the ecosystem but Uganda depends on the health and conservation of its remarkable beauty and ecosystems and its endangered species so I would hope that the SDGs also would be an important opportunity to redouble the protection and support of Uganda's ecosystems and to focus on the kinds of projects that preserve the beauty of your country which is really remarkable and that avoid the ecological harms and the ecological dangers we also know that demographically there will be a shift from the rural areas increasingly to the urban areas and this poses more challenges because the urban infrastructure the water the sanitation the transport grid the power system the healthcare the sanitation the education are all major costs and major challenges of urbanization so the urban transformation which is embodied in SDG 11 are also a huge huge challenge well a big problem with everything that I'm saying is that I'm talking about a lot of investments whether in education or in healthcare or in digital or in energy and those cost money and money beyond what is available in the national budget I'm very much aware of that but I believe that we should hold strong to the goals and that your friends and partners at the UN and in the international agencies and the African Development Bank and UNECA and others should be working together with you to identify how to close the financial gap in other words rather than saying we'll do without electricity or we'll do without schools I hope Uganda says no no we must have the schools we must have the electrification we must close the financing gap and it is your job as our partners to help us to do so and I think that this is the spirit of the sustainable development goals and one of the most important purposes of the sustainable development goals and that is to mobilize the international partnership to get this done so let me conclude here by saying that we're very excited with the launch of SDSN Uganda I'm very gratified that Macquarie University has taken on this great role and challenge it's a great university and we want to work with you to help solve these problems and I hope we can solve them with the speed and urgency that they deserve because I would like to think that every child in Uganda will have the future that they deserve and that they need and that they want and that means helping them to be empowered to be in school to get the skills they need and the jobs afterwards that are going to be good for their livelihood so it's a very very big challenge but it's one that we are eager to help you in finding the way forward let me thank you for the chance to share these brief remarks with you today and to participate in the launch of SDSN Uganda thank you yes thank you very much professor Jeffrey do you hear me I do yes thank you um I've really listened to the insights and I'm happy that you've emphasized SDG number four universal access to quality education for all Ugandan um SDG number three universal access to healthcare we need to be alive we need to be safe the general well-being of all of us but there is also a point on mass electrification that you would wish to see in Uganda and protection of the ecosystem yes protection of the ecosystem given our rapid population growth in Uganda but I'm glad that in the interest of time you've called all of us because you've helped us identify those gaps and you're calling upon Uganda to work with the UN the government private sector universities the academia the media to close the financial gaps that is very essential allow me because I requested the participants to follow us through the chat but I do not see any comments maybe because your your lecture or your address seemed to touch the very core that we are thinking about but since the vice chancellor of mercury university is online professor would you have something before professor Jeffrey leaves us you've listened to professor banna but now where you've listened to his keynote address would you say something just maybe a comment to professor Jeffrey before he leaves then allow so still go to the chat and look at what the other participants are saying well thank you Rita I want to most sincerely thank professor Jeffrey Sachs for participating in this discussion which is extremely important for our country I want I must say that he's one of the international people that I admire who is concerned about the well-being of our planet that's great the well-being of us and also the well-being of the people living in the underdeveloped world I have participated in several meetings where professor Sachs has addressed these issues but I must say professor Sachs I remember very well when you were addressing us in the you in president I mean a university presidents forum and you were concerned very much about what was happening in the united states and you were praying that President Trump should not be reelected otherwise it would be a disaster for the whole world we had some good we had some good news this year yes yes but I am really impressed that you have such knowledge over Uganda that you know even the latest events that are happening in Uganda you seem to have Uganda at your fingertips and for us we must say we are privileged to have you as the person that is heading this network and that will take every advantage of your knowledge of Uganda to work with you and as you have said the universities must be at the center of this and so as Mercury University we are really privileged and we are proud that we associated with you and will take every advantage to extract all the knowledge you already know about Uganda for the improvement of the situation in this country thank you very much thank you voice chancellor it will be my great honor really so I count on you to call on me and we can have more conferences brainstorming discussions I think your great university has a huge role to play and I'm excited to help you in any way thank you wow thank you and Professor Jeffrey there is from the chat the students body under the students hubs have come up with proposals for implementation but find challenges implementing them because of mega honor funding in many instances the students have proposals but they have challenges implementing them and there is a request kindly enlighten students on any avenues to access finances to implement such proposals at the moment with the students are partnering with government private sector civil society in our localities on any activities under SDGs that is coming from the chat one of the students wishes you to give them some enlightenment on any avenues to access finances to implement such proposals under SDGs wonderful well let me thank the students very much and to say also that we have a an SDSN youth global organization and I would like the students to be part of that and that within that SDSN youth we will work with you on the funding issues especially for student led activities to see what can be done and how we could mobilize resources for the country for Uganda at the national level there is a big challenge that is not easy to solve about the resources because Uganda needs a lot of investments in digital in energy in education these can't wait these can't wait till Uganda has enough budget income to satisfy all of that they have to come in upfront because these are investments that are essential for Uganda's development and therefore I believe that it is very important for the national investments to be very clearly identified what is needed what is the strategy then to identify the financing gap and then to work with institutions especially the UN the UN SDSN and institutions like the African Development Bank and also the private sector to say these are the investments that are a high priority how can we get these done whether it is a business investment or an official financing by the African Development Bank or some other combination but we have to study that and then find practical solutions this is very very important what we can't do is say that these have to wait unfortunately that's been how the system has worked in the past it says well it would be nice if everybody had school but there's not enough money for that we have to put the priority in the opposite way and that is to say every child will have school now how are we going to pay for that and whether it's the cancelling debts or new grants or a special 40 year zero interest loan or some other strategy which I can't tell you automatically but I want to analyze this is how we have to do things you know the world is very unfair as I don't have to tell people there is so much wealth but not much is given to help poor children who need schooling and we have to mobilize that wealth and we have to make the case very clearly there was a a magazine in the united states forms magazine which just published in addition last week of the richest about the richest people in the world there are 2,700 billionaires in the world now 2,700 and they have 13 trillion dollars of wealth you know those 2,000 people could ensure not only that every child in Uganda is in school but every child in the whole world is in school that's how rich they are and so we need to make the case urgently whether to tax those people with the wealth tax or whether they give a billion dollars of their money which they would not even mind because they have so many billions in order to get this done but we need to campaign for this and so the young people are very important the SDSN youth can help and with the government it's very important to be ambitious in development not patient ambitious and then to say to the UN to say to the African Development Bank to say to the US government to say to the Chinese government to say to the European Union this is what the SDGs are that we have global cooperation to ensure that every child is in school and the other things that I've talked about so that's what I would like us to to work on thank you thank you very much a professor this is a comment from Barra University Barra University of Science and Technology in Uganda he says I agree with the strategy of he agrees with the strategy of education internet and healthcare but he has concerns especially in healthcare of remotely treating people people are I think what it means is that there are no x-rays x-rays to handle help to provide proper healthcare to humans so in terms yes but we have problems with I think the right equipment the right technology because I think you talked about telemedicine so that is what he's referring to we are having an issue with telemedicine but also he emphasizes the the need for quality and revamping of the curriculum from being knowledge best but creative best I think there he was in agreement then still in chat from Penina Penina thanks you for the keynote and she says here to environmental arts they are developing agribusiness intubation center on agroecology system not only to protect nature but to skill graduates graduates to fit in the job market but she was wondering how they could be supported she was wondering how they could be supported yeah they are coming up with an agro business intubation center yeah this is these are fantastic initiatives and I think one of the opportunities of SDSN Uganda would be to host each year one or more gatherings it could be also online to review proposals and ideas that are coming and to identify priorities or to brainstorm on options on how the financing or the organization can be done whether it's public sector private sector and so forth so I don't know on the specific idea but the general approach is exactly correct and let me emphasize on healthcare and on education digital technology is not the solution all by itself of course but it can be an important addition and that is what I'm suggesting I very much believe in community health workers for example working in the villages I would like them to be empowered with a tablet or a smartphone so that they can connect to a telemedicine center and also when there's no doctor but only a community health worker to be able to give emergency advice for example so I believe that the digital makes all of our systems work better and can really enhance health and education and financing and banking and access to energy and many other things the problem of course is that most households in Uganda don't have access to digital right now because they can't afford it they're not connected they don't have an appliance they don't have a smartphone or a tablet and so on so I'm involved in many discussions about universal access to digital services UN secretary general Guterres has called for a roadmap to universal digital access I know of countries that are scaling up digital access quickly and maybe there are some good lessons there as well I apologize because it's easy to say we should have universal this universal that but when the resources are so little it's very hard to achieve but this is where the breakthroughs need to come and there's enough finance available but it's hard to mobilize we have to identify it we have to press for it we have to break through the complacency which says oh don't hurry don't worry so much and to say yes worry let us get these investments really accomplished that is the mindset that I think is very important and I will mention in the United States for example if you can imagine we have spent because it's a very rich country we've spent six trillion dollars six trillion dollars six thousand billion dollars six million million dollars for just fighting COVID in the last 12 months that's how rich the US is but the US should be helping other countries too to do the same and so this is why the SDGs in my mind are an important tool for us to identify the priorities to identify the financing gaps and to mobilize the resources thank you very much in the interest of time I do kindly request only the the two panelists that was Dr. Albert Wiamgisha the senior technical advisor SDGs if it could have any comment regarding the keynote and also Mr. Sam Maballa the country director cities alliance Uganda if you'd also have any comment or something to say about the keynote before Professor Geoffrey leaves Dr. Albert Wiamgisha I have liked the keynote address by Geoffrey it was very exciting and it's right of course even in my presentation I indicated that we're not doing very well on SDG4 which is education and of course since it is cost-cutting it is government's priority so we must make sure that in whatever we do we handle that with great care and we are happy Geoffrey that as a SDG secretariat we shall work together and benefit from his knowledge it will be my great my great pleasure Dr. Albert to work with you so I'm looking forward to that thank you welcome thank you yes next let's have Mr. Sam Maballa country director cities alliance Uganda Sam yeah thank you very much Caroline I would also like to add my voice to the previous speakers to appreciate and commend Professor for the articulate presentation made my comment is that Uganda seems to be at cross it is urbanizing very rapidly and it needs it needs to leapfrog and catch up on the on the years lost yet the challenge is facing in terms of the energy demand and I think that's the reason why it is late it is putting all its hopes in the fossil fuel the electricity coverage in the country is still very low the urbanization rate is very high and yet it is also prioritizing industrialization at the same time so I think it is the it is now incumbent upon a state challenge to national government to strike a balance between the green technologies and environmentally friendly kind of strategies and the kind of demands that it is facing in order to to to stimulate economic growth to meet I mean and create employment for the for the high population of the young people close to 70 percent of the guidance our youths they need jobs and I think this is the this is the kind of dilemma in which the the the government finds itself so I think they need for striking the balance in order to to achieve the current needs where at the same time is trying to respect the environmental sustainability and the and the SDGs thank you very much professor some well thank you and I'm I'm sure that you're right you know this I don't know all the details of the oil project obviously and I know that there are big hopes for it and one of the hopes is that it will create a lot of jobs building the pipeline and all the construction many billions of dollars would be invested I do believe if the investment were billions of dollars in solar energy there would be more jobs and they would last longer and they would be better for Uganda and better for the people that's my belief of course I stand to be better informed and better corrected but I do feel something strange about this project even though I can understand why the government would like it because as you say it it would create a lot of employment something doesn't feel right to me about it because in other parts of the world pipelines are being canceled and projects are being stopped because we're all shifting to electric vehicles so the use of petrol is going down sharply and we had several pipelines in the United States canceled in the past year and the Canadian pipelines canceled in the past year and so it worries me that's why I raise it it doesn't really make sense to me but of course maybe there's an explanation that I don't understand but I agree with you why the government is prioritizing this I do believe though that you could put vast numbers of young people to work building micro grids mini grids things that would surely last for the future and that is what I would like to try to find out more about thank you so much Archie Knott speaker and from all the participants and what is on charts we are very grateful that you've recorded us time and we also thank you for all the words of wisdom especially your emphasis on the need to allocate resources to ensure that we achieve the SDGs thank you very much we'll see you all soon and congratulations okay please bye bye and to all the participants that has been very lively and very informative and they are very wonderful strategies that came out from the keynote address now I'd like to request Samuel Maballa who is already here to use just 10 minutes Samuel hello Samuel yes please yes do you hear yes Samuel is one of our panelists Samuel you have only 10 minutes just kindly speak to us thank you thank you very much Bodoreta I don't know whether we can be able to to share this slide I made some few slides which I thought I could I could share to guide my submission please do so Revo can you share the slide presentation please as the as the presentation is coming I would like to introduce the organization that I work for I will work for cities alloys in Uganda it is a global partnership which was set up to address urban poverty and the support cities to deliver sustainable development and it's basically it is it is managing a trust fund support cities and national governments to address the challenge of urbanization and enable them to to realize cities without slums so cities alliance is based in Brussels but it is currently having national governments now the first slide that I mean it's based also at country program level the first slide shows the SDGs all the SMA team and my comment on this is that all these SDGs are relevant to cities although only one of them is dedicated to cities and that is the SDG 11 and we can move to the next slide please I'd also like to observe that in the global context cities are occupying only 2% of the total land area however they contribute 70% to the GDP and the consumed 60% of the global energy could be even more they generate more than 70% to greenhouse gas emissions and also generate close to 70% of the globalist so therefore the cities are where the battle for sustainable development will be won or lost and therefore it has become more and more clear that achievements on sustainable development will depend on how well we manage and again the urbanization process currently and globally cities especially in of course more than half of the population are already in cities so we are talking about an urbanized world already so cities alliance was set up to try to address the issue of the urban poor more than 60% of the population especially urban population in the developing countries are actually following the category of the urban poor and most of them live within slums and informal settlements so cities alliance has a vision that it's six to improve the lives of 60 million urban poor across 200 cities in 20 countries by 2030 and it is doing this through leveraging the collective expertise resources partnerships to catalyze the urban transformation at both global level and the national level I said it is a global partnership which belongs to 29 members and all these some governments multilateral agencies NGOs private foundations universities including the academia it has it is called it is collaboration areas are full near the words it works through partnerships and supports programs at the global level we have the global programs we have the country level programs and we have innovation programs at country level the I mean at country level you're focusing more on capacity development we realize that most of the cities have capacity gaps many of them in terms of staff establishments have less than 60% of the kind of staffing that is required when you compare one city say in Uganda and another city in UK which is which has the same population you realize that while in Uganda you only have maybe six planners like in the case of this of the city the same kind of city elsewhere has more than 60 to 100 planners so the capacity issues that need to be addressed the national urban policies have not been have not been put in place in fact cities allows identify the policy vacuum in Uganda and that's one of the areas that it supported to develop to support the government to put in place the national urban policy the issue of infrastructure development it leverage resources to support the government to improve on infrastructure within the municipalities it supported the formulation of the city development strategies these are long-term kind of strategic plans to gate the organization it also mobilizes and empowers for inclusive participation within the planning and budget at global level we have the development of the knowledge products it supports research in various areas advocacy and policy issues when emerging topic issues and also it chooses it is convening powers to catalyze and bring together various stakeholders to discuss issues regarding the urbanization the innovation program aims at incubating fresh thinking and approaches that can address urban challenges particularly in the rapidly urbanizing cities so those are the areas that it operates in now citizens how does it contribute to the SDGs as part of the united nation system city's alliance is hosted by the united nation's office for project services and therefore it strongly advocates for the SDGs and it works towards it is work contributes towards staying out of the SDGs the first one zero one I mean the first one is ending poverty extreme poverty in all its forms as you may realize colleagues the challenge of slums and informal settlement is just a symptom of urban poverty and that's why cities alliance has made this as a as an area priority area for support to try to improve and conditions within the slums so it provides community upgrading funds as grants for infrastructure development provides community development firm as city capital to leverage community savings for investment in in business development 86 percent of the targets in SDG one all of them are relevant to what cities alliance does SDG number five about gender equality in all its programs gender has been mainstreamed in all its programs so it does not do anything without ensuring that gender concerns are addressed now SDG 6789 all those are within the urban development and slum upgrading programs enhancing access to better sanitation to clean energy to decent work to infrastructure all those are what forms part of the programs part of the support that cities alliance provides to cities can we go to the next slide it continues again number 10 reducing inequalities because we realize that if we can address the issue of poor of the urban poor and improve on their on their conditions then we should be able to reduce the inequalities that are inherent within the cities SDG 11 is the one which focuses so much on the cities and I'm glad to say that this is the SDG which which is one of the I think one of the one of the themes that is going to be addressed by SDSN and we are very glad to to be part of the network and we shall actually participate within that within that that field so we can see that all the targets as I say target one two three four five six even going to seven eleven a and b all of those related to what cities alliance does we can move to the next slide please yeah so those are the kind of targets which are related to SDG 11 I just gave a highlight of the targets each of which is trying to address a specific theme related to and that is these are all incorporated within the implementation plans that cities alliance supports the next one okay again those are targets you know by 2030 we expect universal access to inclusive green spaces within the cities all these components that are incorporated within the programs and finally cities alliance portfolio in Uganda cities alliance as an as an organization which is currently having the country office in Uganda has been supporting at national level the urban policy already I think we identified the need for the legal framework to operationalize that policy the issue of infrastructure development is something which we have been we've been involved in to be very exhaustive to support cities to improve on their infrastructure city development strategies we believe that a city must have a vision and a vision is a long term which must every city should aspire to achieve the issue of slum upgrading initiatives we believe that slum upgrading should be citywide gradual but then it should be incremental and then under cities of migration we are addressing the challenges of voluntary migrants those are the labor migrants there are many people who are migrating to the cities in search of employment and then they are the ones who increase the numbers of the unemployed who end up living in slums and informal settlement and then also the issue of voluntary migrants we have refugees and urban refugees who have come in they are putting a lot of pressure on city services and yet the cities don't have the capacity to respond so that is something which we are also supporting the issue of urban expansion planning we realize that we have always been chasing after development that planning comes actually when developments have taken place so cities alliance has now come up with a methodology to look 30 years from now and support cities to anticipate development and plan accordingly how the cities can expand in a not in an orderly manner over the period of 30 years so i'm very glad that uh city's alliance is going to value the partnership and alliance uh will in the sdsn and realize the common shared vision of sustainable development thank you very much for your kind attention back to caroline thank you very much somewhere from the chat we only have one question there is a participant who is asking in the context of sdg what is the operational definition of cities do they include the towns municipalities urban areas kindly just respond to that very briefly so that we go to the next session yeah of course what happens is that uh when we talk about cities each of the countries may have a specific country specific definition of what a city is it may have the hierarchy of you know right from the town boards town councils issues of municipalities they may cities metropolis metropolis and so forth but uh we've regard to in the context of the presentation each of these before it becomes a metropolis it must have been a city if it becomes a city it must have been a municipality before it was a municipality it was a town council so it all depends that you may see the beginnings of a training center like in the 1970 most of the municipalities which we have today we are training centers but they were declared cities last july so we need much as we may be emphasizing the issue of cities but we it is applicable to all the other hierarchies of the urban areas whether at metropolitan level or at regional level or sub regional or district level all urban areas have specific uh kind of they have common they have commonalities which must therefore be addressed too so like when the cities are centers that provide opportunities and that's why people migrate to cities we they hope that they are going to access better a livelihood so whether it is it is at a town council level but it is experienced in migration the only challenge therefore is that when it is a large city the magnitude of the challenge is much bigger but we must therefore need we need to plan and enough for you that realize the kind of sustainable cities that sdgs are referring to thank you very much thank you very much to somewhere may i now invite uh doctor revocatastrino mohanji the national network manager to take us through the next phase thank you very much thank you Rita for moderating the the session and also the key speakers Professor Jeff Sam and Dr Aruba to be amdisha for those um thrilling presentations and which are quite informative now um i request that we again uh adjust the program uh a bit to allow the vice chancellor professor bernabas now and way to speak and um professor bernabas now and way is a professor of architecture he has um been working at mercury uh university for over 30 years rising from the lowest to the highest uh rank and um as our the our executive he has been instrumental in the implementation of sdgs also bearing in mind that he heads um the premier university in Uganda which um is a diverse university disciplinary university that revolves around all the sdgs and uh we really thank you very much for steering the university but also we're coming to host um sdsn uh ugana national network and um with that i would like um to invite um the principal the principal now today uh professor boleti nabanoga to kindly invite the vice chancellor uh to speak to the audience and we also thank him for joined quite early and listening to almost every presentation and we are very grateful so that um at his time he can be able to leave and other go to attend other urgent uh issues of the university and the nation professor now nougat please invite the vice chancellor thank you very much dr twino colleagues you must realize that we at mercury university are privileged to be led by a four-sided leader professor banabas nawangue who is extremely supportive to any initiative that heightens mercury university's visibility his presence today attests to this despite his very busy schedule he chose to sit with us for the last three hours we can't thank you more we are eagerly waiting to hear your usual words of wisdom i therefore take this opportunity and singular honor to invite you vice chancellor professor nawangue to address the congregation i thank you very much professor nawangue and the revo i want to begin by congratulating revo and your whole team for organizing this very important conference i want to thank professor jeff jeff resax for personally attending and addressing the conference uh as i said earlier professor jeff resax is one of the top economies in the world but one who really has a heart for the underprivileged priorities of the world and is very much interested in the issue of the sdgs i want to congratulate the sdns group at mercury university but also the uganda chapter i want to thank the office of the prime minister and also the kcca and other partners who are working with us on the issue of the sdgs mercury as you all know has a new strategic plan and really everything we are doing under that strategic plan is supposed to address practically all the sdgs but of course as a university our core effort is on providing quality education and quality research and therefore directly addressing sdg4 as jeff resaid as a country and as a university we have a big task we must find out why we have such a huge exodus of children both at primary and secondary school i don't know if you all know that the number of children qualifying to come to university has been declining in the last three years that is contradictory because our population is just not skyrocketing and that's the same time the number of children who qualify to come to the university is decreasing it is a huge problem for our country and as market university we must take every necessary effort to address this issue with the increasing population we have two major issues to deal with one is food security how are we going to feed this first growing population so our colleagues in agriculture but almost everybody anyway has to deal with this problem it is a problem that will affect or that can also be handled by our social scientists our economies practically everybody but of course the colleagues in agriculture are at the center of this the second issue is what Mr. Mambala talked about the high rate of urbanization Uganda was a very low urbanizing country for many years but that has changed and the first urbanization is putting pressure on our soils this is a big problem for all of us that definitely will affect our capacity to produce food for all these people but apart from that providing the necessary facilities for a good life in the cities otherwise we are going to end up with huge slums with no resources with no services and we must all address that of course I know that as a university we have very many different fields of knowledge which are all addressing the different SDGs everybody has a role to play I would like to believe that as a university we are going to rise to the challenge and take the leadership in ensuring that we attain these SDGs once again I congratulate you the SDSN chapter at Makere University for organizing this extremely important and interesting conference and I look forward to working with you in helping our country and the rest of humanity in achieving the SDGs thank you very much thank you very much um Professor Barnabas now angry our vice chancellor for those inspiring words and thank you for being there for this event for all this time we are really very grateful I would now like us to move to our very last session which is the storming on the thematic focus of SDSN Uganda we have now very limited time and I wish this can be concluded in the next 15 or so minutes because I imagine participants have other engagements that they want to go through so we had previously allocated five minutes to each of the speakers but we will now reduce them to three minutes so that people just mention the key issues um on these various themes and I would like to hand over to Hakeem Seviri who is the assistant network manager to uh moderate this session Hakeem good evening good morning and good afternoon depending on where I am I would like to first appreciate the participants who have joined in today on the online launch of the SDGs in Uganda network and also thank the different speakers right from the top university management at the different levels of the university from the top management and university level college level and department level then I would also like to appreciate the keynote addresses given by different partners from cities alliance SDSN global and also our partners from different state from different entities within Uganda Africa and the international level uh from this point uh let us go into the brainstorming of the four host uh thematic areas that are emphasized by SDGs in Uganda the first presentation is going to be made by Dr. Christine Orien O'Nan from Guru University and this is going to focus on agriculture and food systems as it has been highlighted that we need to embark on cross disciplinary initiatives and innovations on how to ensure that the developing planet have secure food systems at this point let me call on Dr. Christine Orien O'Nan to have uh insights on this thing thank you good afternoon I hope you're hearing me yes are we together yes yes thank you so much I'm Dr. Christine from Guru University and I'm going to spend maybe less than three minutes I was told to talk to brainstorm on what is done at Guru University on agriculture food systems and human health in line with SDGs and what SDSN Uganda network should do in this area and I would like to say that uh uh in Guru University all our interventions are guided by our visions our vision, mission, and objectives and I think most of you are aware of what we normally our visions, missions, our motto uh is and emphasizing on our motto which is for community transformation so all what we do we gear towards having community transformed various areas while keeping on the sustainability at Guru University all activities in regards to agriculture and food systems in the faculty of agriculture and environment and environment and national resources management and uh we emphasize a lot on agriculture because currently as you know it employs over 80 percent of Ugandans and for the GDP it contributes almost to 26 percent we have six faculties six departments in the faculty of agriculture and environment and in our training uh we have 10 accredited programs in agriculture which has about 500 students and uh we provide multidisciplinary environment to produce all-round graduates to support development of sustainable agriculture and food systems our training uh produces graduates with not only technical skills in the in their respective specialty but also with entrepreneurial orientation social and environmental uh conscience we I talked about the courses in uh in agriculture we have uh bachelor of science in agriculture by systems engineering uh Greek entrepreneurship uh food and agribusiness that is under graduate but we have also other uh graduate programs which include uh masses of science in food and security food security and community nutrition agree uh and uh we are so much engaged or actively engaged in research to improve agricultural production and food systems and our research themes in in agriculture include food systems and agribusiness efficiency of small scale enterprises uh food security and community nutrition food safety uh renewable energy among others and uh our outreach activities is different from others where they have research stations but ours our research stations or our outreach our outreach activities goes to the community direct and that is where our strength is because we send our students to go and learn from the community and also to be to to be to to be to to teach the the community what they already know so it is a two-way direction and uh so in these programs that we have there are a lot of activities which we cannot now talk about now and probably when we join the the the the network then we shall get to know more uh in the last bit we are told we were asked to identify what SDSN can do for us or to do in this area we are saying that there should be if possible support to youth retention and empowerment to improve their agricultural production it is important to know that uh you know the farmers are aging as the youth run run the the cities so it is important that they get to know more all they are supported and I was glad that in all these the youth are are many and they will like to be part of the the network uh therefore another one is that we if possible the network can support our university to carry out research and innovations that can help can help to improve agricultural productivities and food security this is very important and the other one is that our our center student centered model should be empowered that can empower farmers if possible should be expanded so that uh the farmers get to appreciate what we do in agriculture rather than having it in research stations uh since we have no time uh from Gulu we are saying we are committed to joining the network and thank you so much and then for your insightful presentation uh you highlighted about um enhancing the participation of the youth in ensuring agricultural and food system sustainability across different levels which is critical and also you mentioned about the necessity for resources to ensure that this kind of youth participation within uh the different activities that ensure sustainability in agriculture and food security for camp then the student centered model of learning is also critical especially in uh in the contemporary periods where we are facing uh a diverse of problems that require solutions that are engineered engineered by the quality of education which is being delivered to the different students and then next uh let's have uh Mr Emmanuel Ebu to have a presentation on improved health uh I think uh when we look at health currently we consider a paradigm shift from focusing on human health and animal health independently but rather looking at one health where we have humans being increasingly integrated into living with animals let's see what the expert has to say on this thank you yeah thank you very much um called Emmanuel Ebu I'm not the health expert but I'm going to make a presentation on uh natural resources the the health expert is uh Mr Chin Tu who is the coordinator for the for the university hub so my my presentation is going to be a short one which will show what we have so far done we as the students of uh of umbalara university with regard to natural resource preservation and ecosystem health let me put it to to the slideshow so once again my name is Ebu Emmanuel I'm the solutions officer who is a student at the university uh and uh with regard to natural resources we have managed to make a contribution to goal number six and goal number 15 goal number six talking about water that is water resources you all know river Ruiz and you know whatever is happening in river Ruiz the levels are getting lower and the river is becoming silted but of late uh the issue of plastics plastic pollution plastic bottles is the one that has come up so from this slide you can see a group of students um one of them we managed to partner with uh with umbalara district local government uh with uh the ministry of water regional offices in umbalara and then the factories within umbalara like coca cola and uh nail breweries and uh we wanted to see how to solve the problem of plastic bottles on river Ruiz you can see from the background that is river Ruiz on the left and you can see the plastic bottles um so this this is the kind of partnership we we are talking about the students coming together with officials from national water from local government from coca cola from nail breweries and we went to the river to tackle this challenge and this is the challenge of plastic bottles as you can see plastic bottles littered all over the river um the intervention we did in partnership was to do collection of the plastic bottles from the river as you can observe um and the the plastic bottles were removed and packed as you can observe uh apart from the plastics you can see some other waste which are non plastics and they are non biodegradable you also happen to see medical waste that were retrieved from the river system uh and this is a photo of uh the university premises where we plan to also see that we do a cleanup and so I just wanted to highlight a few action points which we came up with in this partnership uh the first action point was of course trying to profile the waste generators in Umbara city and then to carry out a survey to track the sources of the wastes and how they're handled and also to hold stakeholder meetings uh a cross section of stakeholders from from government the private sector the CSOs the students body uh to see how to further manage this problem in Umbara city and of course the tangible actions which are the low-hanging fruits are the collection of the plastics and also we realize that certain parts of river Ruizi like where we got we collected the bottles have falls and these can be tourism sites how can we harness the potential to see that such such is brought to a tourist site status uh like many have mentioned uh we continue to do public awareness and education and also if given chance we we go to the radios and televisions uh to spread the word about natural resource protection uh this is this this was a short presentation uh on what so far the students in Umbara are doing and like one of the comments I made when Professor Sacks was uh had delivered his speech was the comment of having many proposals but uh due to maybe mega funding and or no funding we are not able to to implement such projects but further still we have learned that when we make partnerships when we do partnerships with those who could be having resources with those who could be having resources not only in form of money but in form of tools and in form of knowledge we can go a long way to conserve natural resources yeah thank you so much for your presentation yes I think I'm done okay thank you so much I think you could also consider moving beyond focusing on water watershed restoration but look at the circular economic point of view of turning west into resource that that is a possible way of engaging the private sector to support you on the initiatives you are doing for instance here in Kampala we have large recycling companies that are tracking west from the communities back to recycling systems and it's really having some impact that community and next let's have a presentation on Sustainable Cities from the Vice Chancellor of Legend University that is Dr Fredrik Kakembok can I speak yes okay my topic is on recycling for smart smart cities and I'm talking about inter premium models of stakeholder engagement which we are doing at the University I'm going to share the current status of recycling at the University and I'm talking about recycling uh bio waste municipal bio waste uh first of all in multi-disciplinary integration of various agriculture like a business social sciences to ensure that we bring out and talk about the general aspects of the circular economy so after that we developed business models and technical business models and here we are looking at production of biofuels for cleaning cooking and heating we are also looking at generation of electricity for domestic gasification and the production of fertilizers and the cities uh from that step we went into stakeholder engagement head the first bio waste recycling in Uganda in 1716 we brought about agencies during that conference and we identified the gaps that we need to fill in order to have a very big sustainable recycling enterprise then we had the things like a corporate dinners with the agencies in the country where we we talked about various strategy increase and then the next step undertake circular economy people know what to do when and we also want to stakeholder engagement and where we want the next step awareness across the country by carrying out demonstrations of what we have done so far we want to promote community-based training programs help the Abani youths, Abani women and other groups to train them into the recycling programs we also want to develop the curriculum for educational institutions right from primary up to the university levels and the colleges and we want the network also to streamline the intersectoral linkages between the public together and put this initiative to a bigger level we want again the network to help in the advocacy for policy and institutional frameworks that are going to help the cycling aspect uh we have just seen it from the previous presenter uh the the problem with the challenge of bottles but we want to see how such people can be helped to go to the next level we also want the network to see of cycle when we mobilize men and the youths and the women to recycle we want to afford them some setup financing so that they can open up enterprises so the pictures you see there are some of the products that we have produced not only in the institutions of learning but also on the market in about 10 schools in the Kampala 10 schools are using briquettes for cooking entirely they no longer use firewood we hope that many schools in Uganda could transfer from firewood to briquettes and in so doing they reduce the big volumes of waste which is happening in Kampala in many cities and that waste could be converted into useful products like biofuels and the biopests so that's what I have today thank you very much Selva we think the pointers which you shared on how SDSN Uganda can engage the different pertinence shall be considered uh and carried on with different pertinence to see how we can accelerate the different activities which we can work on finally let's have a presentation from Mr Timofechin too who is coming from SDSN youth yeah spray uh after Mr Timofechin coming on which I'll have a presentation from um madame Gafedin Molinde okay thank you I hope I'm audible enough yes okay that's great so um a good afternoon to you all um Chintu Timothi I'm currently in Bahrain University of Science and Technology but I'm also a volunteer with SDSN youth so um the Sustainable Development Solutions Network particularly the youth branch uh aims to empower youth globally to create sustainable solutions and uh we hope to that's a shame but maybe we should move on if his connection is not working hello can you hear us yeah I was just saying it sounds like unfortunately Timothi has lost his connection yeah we are going to have another presenter Catherine Molinde as maybe he gets reconnected then we can have him last okay um good afternoon to you all Catherine here and um I'll be sharing my screen I'm Catherine Molinde and I'm from Makere University from the College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences and I'm also part of Mukri that is hosting this launch and the thematic priorities area that I was requested to talk about is about climate compatible development which is a very passionate priorities area based on the the priority areas for SDSN the fact that if we look at Uganda and from the previous speakers that have really brought up the bigger picture and vulnerability of our country in the face of a changing climate it is worth it that this priority area is considered to ensure promotion of adaptation and mitigation um options um this compatible development factor is housed within SDG 13 that is mainly looking at climate action and I like the choice of the word compatible meaning that climate development is at the center of every economic sector and it is at the center of every discipline per se so SDSN Uganda that is housed in Mukri desires to look at three key areas in climate compatible development and that is looking at a low carbon development pathways capacity building and then transformative solutions I I've loved the keynote speaker who has really emphasized the issues of energy in our country and growing into an oil um economic development world issues of carbon emissions and looking out for options of reducing these emotions is very important when we are looking at climate compatible development uh capacity building is at the center of universities and Mukri takes it as a key factor in capacity building as I'll later be building on this and when we talk about transformative solutions we are looking at options that enhance livelihoods but also ensure ecosystem based adaptation options for the now and even for the future so Mukri in the perspective of climate compatible development together with mercury university and the college of agriculture and environmental sciences have taken on a number of activities that they desire to be achieved and I'm happy to say some of them have already taken off in different areas that is trainings and demonstrations considering evidence best research and innovations research for development looking at stakeholder dialogues knowledge management communication and dissemination and awareness building so when we talk about evidence best research and innovations a number of activities have been taken on in mercury university looking at climate resilient agriculture systems a research has been conducted in different aspects especially when we talk about livestock and crop production systems Mukri with support from different stakeholders and funding organizations they have really supported a range of students to conduct this right research from bachelor's level up to phd level um they have also conducted research in the economics of climate change assessed the economics of the impact of climate change but also the economics of adaptation and mitigation when we talk about environment climate and migration this is at at the center of a number of disciplines if you're talking about environment you can bring in conflict and issues of gender climate change has really led to disruption of communities where people have migrated to other places because of disasters or risks that are climate related in terms of research development mercury is looking at nature best solutions for adaptation and mitigation and the concerns at heart are issues of natural resources and ecosystems restoration and rehabilitation as we have even looked at an example of rivers so the issues that are desired and even professor elisa bt has already highlighted it in the chat room that this requires urgent response so when we talk about natural resources how do we rehabilitate the really damaged ecosystems sustainable utilization we are looking at an integration our speaker that talked about cities resilience and integration of the urban and the rural rural communities sustainable utilization of energy sustainable utilization of water resources issues of quality and quantity coming there our research for development we are looking at rain water harvesting and irrigation systems particularly now to downscale them to the small scale communities uh mercury under mercury university has also gone ahead to consider management systems of climate change under knowledge management communication and dissemination and this has been well supported by uh fau integration of management systems and integration of information science together with the universities as knowledge brokers in climate resilience and especially looking at climate policy and the climate guidelines awareness is a key factor when we are talking about climate compatible development and this is where the youth as many have been highlighting are considered youth engagements diplomacy engagements bridging the gap between the old and the young and also integrating knowledge from the youth to the young from the young people and upscaling it to the older generation in understanding climate issues when i get back to trainings and demonstration within the college of agriculture and environmental sciences there has been a lot of effort in designing curricula across the different levels and programs within the school of forestry and environmental sciences it has taken on the lead to cross cut climate change science across different programs such that as students get a foundation when they get out there they have the knowledge of climate and a way of taking climate action ahead but also mukri has supported through short courses climate change and agriculture development courses across different levels stakeholder local government for them to understand what climate change issues means at their workplaces i'll conclude with a stakeholder dialogues uh mukri has been honored to uh participate with different organizations i've listed some of them but the list doesn't end there act together international organization for migration worldwide university network us id fowl and from the national to the local but in all these engagements being really housed in a university the young people at the heart of uh making sure that information goes out there so i second the efforts and the desire for young people and for the youth for further engagement in climate issues especially in achieving sdg-13 climate action and the benefits of climate compatible development has wins beyond what we call the win win analogy but they go beyond to enhancing resilience they go beyond uh in reducing emissions and also improving development so when we look to this the desired outcome is an improvement in sustainable agricultural systems uh reducing food insecurity we are looking at water security energy security improvement of health as earlier speakers have really highlighted and what is desired is the well-being and improvement in the livelihood of every Ugandan so i encourage that through the sdsn networks and youth engagements should be enhanced through mercury university through the networks of other universities and those that are planning to join the network i suggest that we do it much faster because the changes in climate are not waiting for anyone they will take on and continue to continue to take on so stakeholders on this platform and beyond i encourage you to join partners friends civil society families communities but also communication and dissemination of climate change knowledge and science to the former and the informal sector we need to translate climate change to a language that is acceptable and understood by different levels in our country so the science currently and the understanding of climate change is within the scientific world and mainly the formal sector and the informal sector all they understand are the basics but they do not know yet the future they cannot conceptualize very well what the future is like so i challenge sdsn for us to take on approaches of communicating disseminating and downscaling all this understanding and knowledge to the language that can be understood by every Ugandan everywhere for that i thank you very much for the presentation about climate compatible development and how we can scale down the information and translation of scientific language into what can be understood by the common person i think team of day is back team of are you there thank you very much i'm very sorry i was interrupted by every boots but i was still talking about the sustainable development solution network the youth branch and how we seek to empower youth globally to create sustainable solutions how we think of doing this is by creating by educating you know when the youth know about the sdgs when they are aware then they can take action but they cannot take action alone and that leads us to our next step which is collaboration collaboration between communities between civil society organizations and university associations between the government and universities and through this we hope to support innovation and tackle key domain areas such as schools and university campuses i've mentioned why universities are very important now sdsn youth has two initiatives it has come up with to put young people at the forefront of achieving the sdgs one of them is a global schools program which hopes to integrate the sdgs into a school setting ideally this would be primary and secondary school settings in Uganda but it hasn't been strongly implemented but on the other hand the wing under which i lie is the sdg students program this consists of sdg student hubs that are both semi physical and semi virtual and they have been put up in institutions of higher learning now these hubs aim to educate university students about the sustainable development growth and train them into supporters who hopefully will carry this issue of sustainability through their future work given after they graduate currently i'm the coordinator of the sdgs student sub at baren university of science and technology and i am working with a colleague at mercury university and both these hubs were set up at the same time that was last year in october 2020 there was a call put out and we applied so we have set up hubs i'm not sure how big the mercury hub is out of now but the hub at baren university of science and technology currently consists of 20 members that are very vigorous and a leadership team of six members now we've been in direct communication with the global team at the sustainable solutions network headquarters in new york and when i heard that sdgs is finally coming to Uganda finally launching in Uganda i was very happy because this means that now we can work hand in hand with people that directly understand the problem that's on ground um what we've been doing in the six months that we've been set up you know earlier we had trainings to get ourselves acquainted with the sdgs but right now we are the ones looking for opportunities in which we can engage university students in how to do um how to carry out projects how to think in the line of sustainability um we've had two sessions uh the first one was bachelet it was in december 2020 uh we did it in collaboration with the student hub at mercury university at mercury university unfortunately the turn up was a bit low because you'll find that most of the youth have excuses here and there some to do with data and they ask you they have data refund and uh unfortunately you do not because we are also volunteers so last month here at the university we decided to redo it physically and uh this time round we invite we had about 90 participants that we can say now have an in-depth understanding of the sdgs now this is the point of the hubs the hubs use the existing university structures to get in touch with the university students because you'll find that in most cases at least a student belongs to an association or another and for us to set up independently we saw was going to be a bit of a challenge so what we are doing we are collaborating with different associations that exist to see how we can use their mandate as associations and then point it in the direction of sustainability and enable all students to have an in-depth understanding but understanding and knowing about the sdgs is one thing and taking action is another and this is why I feel that us as the hubs will hit a roadblock previously we've not had enough support in this area so sdsn launching in Uganda means that we have a new opportunity to network I understand sdsn Uganda may know people that I personally don't know that are willing to train and get and possibly mentor students that are interested in the same areas of focus under the sdgs we understand like personally because of my course I am interested in sdg number three which has to do with good health that may not be the same as that of an engineer who may have possibly something about sustainable cities like previous speakers have spoken about now one of the hub members actually presented previously a manual and we've been looking into climate change and making the earth a separate place to live and that's why we discovered this problem with river easy and we've had proposals coming in from different students interested in different things and we are hoping that engaging the students and possibly supporting their proposals to the point of implementation will enable them also motivate them to talk to other students to get into this right that is sdgs now team okay and we are running out of time you should be concluding the presentation oh okay I'm sorry I was actually about to conclude actually with the quote by Albert Einstein that said we cannot solve problems with the same thinking that we used to create them now most of the problems we have that inspire the development of the sustainable development goals have been accumulating over time and you find that the youth were not in play when this problem was created so it is very important that we tap into this role that the youth can play towards finding very innovative solutions towards the sdgs so we are very interested as youth I saw that we are going to have sdsn youth Uganda the youth are very interested in playing a role in at in working towards the sdgs and I ask that we keep in touch and we are involved in the decision making and implementation processes thank you very much team of for your presentation we are glad that you had begun some initiatives on how to engage the youth in implementing the different sustainable development goals targets and other activities and the sdsn Uganda offer an opportunity for the sdsn youth to collectively bargain and claim for their inclusivity in whatever is happening I believe it's going to collectively bring together all the different hubs within the different entities to come up with innovative ideas to see that we have one voice and one goal for all the sdgs fraternity thank you I hand it over to Dr Revo to provide conclusive remarks and we see how we can take on our platform to the next day thank you all the speakers and for all of you participants for being resilient up to this late time we are going to finalize our our session with the poll on sdgs if you go to the chat box you will see a link for you to participate in the poll it's just the last like one to two minutes maybe if I could share the screen so you'll find if you'll find this link in your chat box you just click and then you participate in the poll and that will be our last item on the agenda but I don't know our senior manager who manages the african region if you have any few messages that you want to tell your participants I think Eve has already left so we'll participate in this poll and then we'll be closing but I think Professor Sabiti is still on is Professor Sabiti still on yes could you just talk to the participants to this large event as I said in the very beginning I took over from Professor Sabiti who started this initiative and it would be quite good to listen to the old man who started this initiative here Sabiti please just a few words to the participants and then you will close officially this meeting thank you very much Dr. River I am really very very happy that what I started as an old man as you said I handed it over to you as a young man and I'm very very happy that you have achieved what I had wanted to achieve so I have done very good successional planning and the SD SN Uganda is now operational and it is operational at such a high level to have linked with the office of the prime minister to have linked with the top most person in economics Professor Jeffrey Sachs and continued working with Eva this is very good and the participants who have attended I'm very happy that they really have a lot of enthusiasm you are young and with very good ideas we need to work together to make sure that all these SDGs in Uganda are well implemented for the good of our country so what has been discussed is really good what we need to do is to fine tune what to pick up those priority areas that SD and SD Uganda will now coordinate with all those participants increase the number of membership institutions so that this huge huge challenge all sustainable of developing sustainable romance solution network does an effective work in Uganda we want a green Uganda we want a green economy so that we have these sustainable projects that will help us continue working so I'm very happy congratulations to everybody we appreciate the Vice Chancellor Professor Nawa Angwe I started with him he was the one who gave the go-ahead and Professor Nawa Noga was the first principal I mean he was delegated by the principal to chair the first meeting that we heard of is Eve here in our Kori Dowa Gurkato Sciences so all along the program or the network has been well supported so I thank you members thank you very much for all your efforts and the time you have spent in the attending and participating very well in this year and thank you for those Professor Sabiti thank you for those nice words and for starting all this and that planting the tree that is now having bearing the the the branches that have even the fruits so we are approaching the closure of this session as I mentioned please go to the chat box and participate in the poll and then we'll be unless Akim do you have any other issue to announce we don't want any other presentation just announcements and then we close and leave our resident participants to go to other activities mainly for those who left premature okay okay thank you so much please go to the chat box and follow the link and then do the poll we're happy to be with you and uh Rofi something else yeah I was asked to put my face into me yeah we can see you so that people may know me yeah thank you the old man congratulations everyone yeah congratulations everybody thank you for attending this meeting I wish to now close a group a group photo with the with the online participants yes the the technical team can guide that is the way you turn on the videos and do something online and thereafter the rest of us will also go at the entrance but is Juma there or Albert we could turn on videos there is a way it's done I will leave the matter of generals to the generals Albert or Juma Albert is here Juma has left so you can take the picture of that I'm going to go to the next very good the pictures are taken so the technical team which is here we meet at the entrance and the take a group photo and then we call it a day thank you very much