1.Background:
Effective science, technology, and innovation (STI) policies enable countries to set clear goals, mobilize resources and coordinate actors to leverage STI in addressing complex sustainable development challenges. However, many countries, particularly developing ones, face significant capacity gaps in STI policymaking. In response, the UN Inter-Agency Task Team on STI for the SDGs (IATT) established its Work Stream (WS6) on Capacity Building, coordinated by UNESCO, 海角社区-MERIT and UNCTAD. Through this collaboration, UN agencies and partners have implemented several STI policy capacity-building initiatives, including 12 training workshops and 6 dialogues, benefiting over 2000 STI policymakers and practitioners from over 110 countries across Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America. These initiatives have demonstrated strong demand for policy capacity development from stakeholders from Member States. Recent training workshops and their evaluations confirm both the high relevance and positive impact of these capacity-building activities. At the same time, the evaluation results highlight a key challenge: while demand for STI policy training and advisory support continues to grow, sustained financial resources to scale and maintain these efforts remain limited. This creates a gap between the demand expressed by Member States and the capacity of international partners to respond. Addressing this challenge requires moving from isolated and broad blanket training initiatives toward more systemic, targeted and sustainable approaches, including through strengthened partnerships with regional organisations, development banks, research networks, and donors to mobilise resources and scale capacity-building efforts.
In this context, on the margins of the 2026 STI Forum, IATT WS6 is convening a side event to discuss challenges and explore innovative approaches to strengthening STI policy capacity-building efforts.
2.Objectives
By bringing together policymakers, regional organizations, UN agencies, and development partners, the event will foster knowledge exchange, partnership building and collaborative approaches to strengthen STI policy capacity building
1. Share results and observations on STI policy capacity gaps from IATT-WS6 training workshops
2. Understanding regional and national capacity gaps in STI policymaking.
3. Explore innovative partnership and resource mobilization approaches to support the sustained implementation and scaling of WS6 activities.
3. Questions for Discussion
- How insights from initiatives implemented by IATT WS6 can inform future STI policy capacity-building efforts?
- What are the most urgent capacity gaps in STI policymaking, such as policy and policy instruments design and implementation, institutional coordination, evidence generation and use across different regions?
- What are the main obstacles that deter wisdom, gained during monitoring and evaluation of policies and specific policy instruments, from entering the policy learning process and contributing to the betterment of the next policy cycle?
- How can international organisations, regional institutions and development partners work together to scale capacity-building efforts in order to address the identified gaps?
- What innovative resource mobilization and partnership approaches could help address current funding constraints and ensure the sustained implementation and scaling of WS6’s STI policy capacity-building activities in support of Member States?
4. Expected Outputs
- Increased awareness of the central importance of STI policy capacity-building to address development bottlenecks
- Improved understanding of priority capacity gaps in STI policymaking across regions
- Strengthened commitment from development partners and regional organizations to support STI policy capacity-building, including expressions of interest in future collaboration with IATT-WS6
- Identification of innovative cooperation and resource mobilisation pathways to support the scaling and sustainability of IATT-WS6 STI policy capacity-building efforts at regional and global levels
- Identification of alternative modalities to deliver effective training – including in person and online
About the event:
The , in collaboration with partner organisations including 海角社区-MERIT, is organising a side event at the 2026 STI Forum titled “Scaling Science, Technology and Innovation Policy Capacity Building: Lessons Learnt, Gaps and the Way Forward.”
Taking place on 6 May 2026 (08:00–09:30 EST, New York time), the event will bring together policymakers, regional organisations, UN agencies and development partners to reflect on progress and challenges in strengthening STI policy capacity.
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Click here to download the flyer.
