Collaborative Rationality to leave no one behind
Early Experiences on contextualising the health-related Sustainable Development Goals in Zimbabwe

Practice paper | 2018
Fortunate Machingura, McDonald Lewanika, Gibson Mhlanga, and Abigail Msemburi
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) allow each country to contextualise implementation as most relevant to domestic contexts. In this spirit, this practice paper illustrates how a deliberate, participatory approach to SDG contextualisation can lead to the prioritisation of health outcomes and actions at community level. Working with Zimbabwe as a case study, it draws attention to the reconsideration of collaborative rationality as a practice that can not only break through stalemates but also facilitates dialogue and produces creative solutions to complex and sometimes controversial difficulties, winning stakeholders' cooperation for action and results. The paper does not seek to pin down a prescriptive practice of SDG contextualisation, a process central to the success of the SDG agenda. Instead, it sets out broad parameters to offer governments, and other implementers some concrete propositions for methodologies to take, and aims to help build greater understanding among governments as to what SDG contextualisation entails in-situ.
Key messages
- A deliberate, participatory process built on the practice of collaborative rationality provides the means towards contextualising the SDGs for communities.
- SDG contextualisation is essential to the delivery of SDG3 and other health-related targets, and by its very nature demands a focus on leaving no one behind in planning, implementation and reaping the benefits of improved health outcomes.
- An analysis of the SDG contextualisation process must be subjected to a lifecycle perspective that pays strong attention to the temporal dimension of pockets of effectiveness and underlying events, actions and outcomes.