Mapping national development priorities under the Sustainable Development Goals framework: a systematic analysis

Since their adoption in 2015, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with their ambition to be universal and indivisible, have become a dominant framework to discuss development matters, especially on the international stage. This work aims at bringing information on whether or not the SDGs provide a good mapping of development priorities as expressed by countries. We develop a new analysis of the SDG framework (within the 2030 Agenda) by systematically mapping the national development priorities displayed by 121 countries in their long-term development documents. We thus categorize each priority under its related SDG(s) and create a typology of documents, along with a visualization tool—which displays how SDGs are prioritized across countries. We show that only a few priorities do not fit in—notably some related to defence and population growth. Moreover, some SDGs are largely more prioritized, and there are many documents in which not all SDGs appear. The tool and database might inform many development-related questions—here enabling us to discuss the relevance and targeted universality of the 2030 Agenda in light of its connections with national development priorities.