Working towards sustainable development goals in Sub-Saharan Africa
Achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) requires addressing highly interlinked and complex challenges that draw on knowledge from both science and society. Among world regions, Sub-Saharan Africa is particularly unlikely to meet the SDG targets by 2030, due to structural and historical inequalities as well as ongoing social, economic, and environmental pressures. According to the Africa Sustainable Development Report 2025, the continent is making progress on 12 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, but the pace remains insufficient to achieve them all by 2030. Progress is particularly uneven in areas such as health and well-being (SDG 3), gender equality (SDG 5), decent work and economic growth (SDG 8). Reaching these goals in Sub-Saharan Africa therefore requires addressing wicked problems that span multiple sectors and operate at local, national, regional, and global levels. Conventional modes of research that rely on single disciplines and experts alone are ill-equipped to address such challenges.
Transdisciplinary research (TDR) has gained prominence among researchers, funders, and policymakers as an approach to address complex sustainability challenges, yet little is known about how TDR is practiced in the Global South in pursuit of the SDGs. While TDR is often seen as a valuable approach for addressing complex sustainability issues, it remains unclear whether projects that claim to be transdisciplinary truly are, and how this plays out in practice, both in the Global South and elsewhere.
This project will answer the following questions: How can we genuinely work transdisciplinary within the context of sustainable development in Sub-Saharan Africa? And what lessons can be learned to improve the theory and practice of transdisciplinary research for achieving the SDGs?
Investigating transdisciplinary research practices as a means to address sustainable development goals
Through a comparative analysis of TDR practices among SDG related projects in Sub-Saharan Africa, this project aims to:
- Understand the opportunities and challenges involved in implementing TDR principles in sustainable development initiatives.
- Compare processes and experiences with TDR in Sub-Saharan Africa and assess their significance for reaching the SDGs.
- Investigate theoretical and practical implications for TDR practices in the Global South.
- Engage with ongoing research activities linked to the Dutch Research Agenda (NWA) route 23 (SDGs for inclusive global development) by fostering TDR principles and reflexive practices.
- Develop empirically informed policy recommendations to improve TDR practice in sustainable development initiatives in the Global South.
- Strengthen collaboration and establish new interactions among actors for future research on SDGs.
Co-creating lessons and recommendations to strengthen transdisciplinary research practices
This project brings together experts in transdisciplinary and sustainable development across Africa and Europe, including the Athena Institute (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), Maastricht University, the former SDG Centre for Africa (Rwanda), and the GROW Network/TU Delft. Working collaboratively, the partners conduct a scoping review, case study analysis, and stakeholder workshops to better understand and strengthen TDR practices through co-created lessons and recommendations. As project lead, Athena is involved in all stages and work packages of this research and leads the case study analysis, examining how TDR is approached and practiced in SDG-related initiatives across Sub-Saharan Africa.
As the first comprehensive comparative analysis of TDR practices among SDG-related projects in Sub-Saharan Africa this project aims to generate impact in three main ways:
- Theoretical insights into how TDR is conceptualized and practiced in diverse Sub-Saharan African contexts.
- Empirical understanding of the processes, challenges, and enabling factors shaping TDR in practice.
- Collaborative learning, through the involvement of 50 PhD candidates from the GROW network who apply TDR principles in their research, using a “learning by doing” approach.