SDG 8

DECENT WORK AND ECONOMIC GROWTH

Investing in the Sustainable Development Goals

ECOPER has completed the evaluation of the UNCTAD project ‘Investment promotion partnerships for the development, marketing and facilitation of bankable Sustainable Development Goal projects’. The project aimed to enhance the capacities of investment promotion agencies (IPAs) in the preparation, promotion and facilitation of bankable SDG projects. ECOPER’s evaluation approach involved data collection through diverse information sources and methods: a documentary analysis, semi-structured interviews with project stakeholders and an extensive, multi-lingual online survey of IPAs.

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Entrepreneurship policymaking

Better designed and implemented entrepreneurship policies should result in more new businesses created, with potential long-term benefits for economic growth, employment and economic integration. Following this logic, UNCTAD has implemented the project ‘Support Developing Country Policy Makers in the Formulation of National Entrepreneurship Policies through the Implementation of Entrepreneurship Policy Frameworks’. The intervention has been with an evaluation conducted by ECOPER, which featured an extensive document review, along with interviews and an online survey. ECOPER also attended an Africa Entrepreneurship Forum in Kigali, Rwanda in order to directly observe project activity.

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Support for TVET in the Southern African Development Community

Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) can empower individuals and contribute to economic growth. UNESCO’s Better Education for Africa’s Rise (BEAR) project aimed to support TVET in five African countries and this month the project’s evaluation report was published following a collaboration between ECOPER and Ockham IPS. The evaluation involved ECOPER carrying out field missions in two countries: The Democratic Republic of Congo and Namibia.

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Public-private development partnerships in the Dominican Republic

Public Private Development Partnerships (PPDPs) are recognised as one of the primary means of implementing the international development agenda as framed by the Sustainable Developing Goals. On this topic, CODESPA recently presented the report ‘Institutional, Legal and Socioeconomic Context as a Reference for the Establishment and Promotion of Public Private Development Partnerships in the Dominican Republic’, in which ECOPER collaborated. The study was funded Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) and was commissioned ahead of an AECID project which will aim to strengthen the capacities of the Dominican Vice Ministry of International Cooperation in the creation of PPDPs.

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Entrepreneurship and enterprise skills development

Entrepreneurship and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have been a priority area for the European Training Foundation (ETF) in recent years in recognition of their effects on economic growth, job creation and social cohesion. ECOPER has collaborated with Ockham IPS to complete the evaluation of the ETF’s work in entrepreneurship and enterprise skills development (EESD) in partner countries between 2010 and 2014. The evaluation involved a contribution analysis, reflecting the ETF’s place among several other stakeholders attempting to promote EESD. This means that rather than seeking to establish whether the ETF’s interventions led to the observed impact, the analysis aimed to ascertain the ETF’s contribution to the perceived effects as one actor among a group. This was done by qualitatively analysing all potential key causal links. The evaluation incorporated six in-depth country studies, as part of which ECOPER conducted three field missions in Armenia, Lebanon and Tunisia.

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