As described in my blog entry February 3rd, I am referring, on a weekly basis, to each of the SDGs: facts, targets, and how could companies be engaged. This week is about SDG#9 -Industries, Innovation and Infrastructure
This SDG is aabout building resilient infrastructure, promote sustainable industrialization and foster innovation. As stated in thee UN web “Investments in infrastructure – transport, irrigation, energy and information and communication technology – are crucial to achieving sustainable development and empowering communities in many countries. It has long been recognized that growth in productivity and incomes, and improvements in health and education outcomes require investment in infrastructure”
Facts:
16% of the global population does not have access to mobile broadband networks.
For many African countries, particularly the lower-income countries, the existent constraints regarding infrastructure affect firm productivity by around 40 per cent.
Industrialization’s job multiplication effect has a positive impact on society. Every job in manufacturing creates 2.2 jobs in other sectors.
Small and medium-sized enterprises that engage in industrial processing and manufacturing are the most critical for the early stages of industrialization and are typically the largest job creators. They make up over 90 per cent of business worldwide and account for between 50-60 per cent of employment.
Least developed countries have immense potential for industrialization in food and beverages (agro-industry), and textiles and garments, with good prospects for sustained employment generation and higher productivity
Targets: There are 8 targets. Targets and the indicators to track progress can be found here: https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/infrastructure-industrialization/
Companies engagement:
This is clearly one of the SDGs where businesses can contribute the most. There are a lot of great examples of companies engaging with this SDG, some of them can be found in the following link:
http://www.businessfor2030.org/goal-9-build-infrastructure-foster-innovation
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