Stakeholders from five other regions, including Greater Accra, Ashanti, Eastern, Central and Northern made up of academia, industry, public and private institutions, and media participated in the project aimed at building capacity for effective M&E to track progress on STI ecosystem for development, using an inclusive approach.

It is to strengthen the STI system for Sustainable Development, and the development of M&E framework that is tailored to Ghana’s circumstances, needs, and priorities.

The Science and Technology Policy Research Institute of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR-STEPRI) as part of implementing the SIDA-UNESCO Project under the auspices of the Ministry of Environment Science Technology and Innovation (MESTI) hosted the capacity programme.

The UNESCO project also known as “Strengthening STI systems for Sustainable Development in Africa” is being implemented among governments and national science institutions in six African countries namely, Ghana, Congo, Namibia, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe. Under it, countries are taking measures to strengthen their national and regional STI policies, governance of STI, and institutions in research and innovation.

The expected the outcomes would contribute to enhancing awareness and knowledge about the STI M&E framework indicators to allow for Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Assemblies (MMDAs) and other actors to report on such indicators for national development.

Dr Mrs Wilhemina Quaye, Director of CSIR- STEPRI said the initiative would strengthen a comprehensive science that would interact with all societies and major actors in the STI ecosystem to work together in an environment that encompasses natural, social, and human sciences, an interdisciplinary approach to scientific work.

She said this approach call for breakdown of existing silos and working interactively together towards harnessing their common synergies for quality data gathering to strengthen STI systems for the rapid actualisation of the sustainable development goals (SDGs).

Dr George Essegbey, former Director of CSIR-STEPRI said the STI is a driver for sustainable and national development and that the STI M&E framework indicators was helping to introduce stakeholders to quality data dispensation and onto the Global observatory of science policy instrument at the country levels.

He said a buy-in by stakeholders would open the frontier for reporting on M&E indicators framework that facilitate the development of Ghana’s STI ecosystem.

He said formulating an effective STI policy was critical towards addressing under-development and poverty related issues urging participants to create awareness on the subject area.

Madam Angela Koranteng, a representative of UNESCO said her outfit was an enabler and created the opportunity for member states to take advantage of the platform with each country choosing the way to report to facilitate accelerated development of STI systems.

She said the STI platform was another initiative in the semblance of the SDGs and member states were obliged to sign onto it to strengthen the capacities of its scientific ecosystems for development.

Participants were exposed to Ghana’s STI M&E Indicators framework on human resource capacity, infrastructure, organisation and institutions.

Some of the conclusions and recommendations included strategies to enhance community-based ICT centres and reinforcing community-based ICT at lorry parks to open inclusivity, generating data on people with disabilities and the aged, identify the variables that speak to indicators, among others.

It was also recommended that institutions should incorporate security systems that allow security personnel to detect cyber crimes.