TASHKENT, Uzbekistan, December 25. The memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed between the French Development Agency (AFD), the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), and Uzbekistan introduces innovative tools and strategies for sustainable development in the country, AFD’s Country Director for Uzbekistan Olivier Grandvoinet told Trend.
"The SDSN is collaborating with the Uzbek Ministry of Finance and the Center for Economic Research and Reforms (CERR), a government think tank focused on economic analysis. The MoU is a significant step toward achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Uzbekistan. It centers on developing specialized tools for monitoring SDG progress, strengthening institutional capacities, and facilitating knowledge transfer," he said.
According to him, the SDSN’s contribution will focus on tailoring a quantitative analysis approach and tools successfully tested in countries like Benin to track SDG progress at the national level.
Olivier Grandvoinet highlighted three key areas of collaboration under the MoU. The first is tool development. SDSN will design and implement monitoring tools. The second is capacity building and knowledge transfer. The tools and their applications will be shared with scientific and institutional stakeholders in Uzbekistan, enabling their use in planning and policymaking. Sustainability will be ensured by integrating Uzbek academic partners into the SDSN network. The third part includes help from the FABLE Network, which stands for "Food, Agriculture, Biodiversity, Land Use, and Energy." This network offers modeling tools for planning food systems, biodiversity, and land use in a way that is in line with the SDGs and the Paris Agreement.
"This partnership marks a significant step toward strengthening Uzbekistan’s ability to monitor and implement sustainable development strategies effectively and, in particular, to assess progress against the ambitious objectives set by Uzbekistan under its Strategy 2030," he emphasized.
