Signals, in the focus. 

The civil society organizations that we reached out to, shared with us, signals within their fields of expertise that they believe are important for development processes in our country. We selected few signals that we would like to highlight. 

• Open Data for Development 

Open data, encouraging open data streams and enhancing digitalization can help communities tackle the development challenges they are facing. The organizations we reached out to reported that in the upcoming years, we could/should see a greater push towards data sets being open to the public for the successful monitoring and evaluation of public policies, but also to empower people and organizations with the data needed to try and find solutions to some of the challenges they are facing. Mindful of the current situation, where the open data movement in our country is in its inception phases, we could and should expect it to grow, and be utilized for better informed policymaking. We can already see the creation of national open data portals, national policy documents that encourage this process, but also organizations that encourage citizens to use these data sets for policymaking through open data hackathons and ideations. 

• Integration into the European Union 

One signal that was noted and shared by the organizations we reached out to, was the speech by President Charles Michel at the Bled Strategic forum, where he spoke about the next enlargement of the Union, to be completed by 2030, as well as the idea of a gradual integration and progressive integration. For North Macedonia, as a country that currently has opened negotiations with the Union this signals a potential opportunity for yielding the benefits of a closer association and participation in the European programmes and policies even before full accession to the Union. 

• Protecting Natural Resources 

The need to enhance sustainable management of natural resources in the years ahead is one prominent signal that was highlighted for us. Namely, our country is struggling with extreme weather events, and higher temperatures pose a challenge for both urban and rural communities and peoples. One signal that was shared with us comes from the agricultural sector, reporting the challenges that farmers face with the water that they use for irrigation, that combined with the droughts makes it a challenging situation for their crops. In the upcoming years, we can expect for the sustainable management of our water resources to become one of the core priorities for our communities, where inevitably: governance, innovation and collaboration will have to be utilized to tackle the challenge. Although this signal focuses on water as a natural resource, the same point can be made for the emphasis that will have to be placed in the future on our: forests, air, land protection. 

• People-Led Development

We received several signals on the anticipated enhanced role of people [organized in civil society organizations, startups, informal initiatives and other forms of associations] in key development processes of our country in the upcoming years. One signal, based on recuring recommendations from the EU to make our public policy process more inviting and inclusive for CSOs and points to a direction of change that is to be expected – that organizations will become an even more integral and important part of the legislative, public policymaking, and the euro-integrative processes. Another signal that was noted by the organizations we spoke to relates to the current and potential enthusiasm of people to take part in projects, businesses and initiatives that have ‘green’ ideas in its core, be it green businesses or waste transformation in their communities. This goes hand in hand with another noted signal, on the growing infrastructure of the Macedonian startup scene, with available early-stage startup funding in several urban centers, as well as some startups having attracted international investors. 

• Empowerment and Education

We also received signals of change, that talk about anticipated activities in the spaces of empowerment and education of people. One area of anticipated change is media literacy and the resilience of communities, institutions, and people in avoiding and tackling mis-disinformation campaigns. Although rather low on the lists of media literacy, the indexes suggest that we are having incremental improvements. In addition to this, another recorded signal, speaks about the potential strengthening of civil political education in the school system in North Macedonia, as a tool to improve the current situation regarding recorded attitudes of young people in the country on various democratic principles and processes. Depopulation and demographic changes are also one notable signal of change, that will require a whole-of-a-society approach in tackling in the years ahead. Last census data in North Macedonia showed a significant drop of the population with the youth population being one of the most affected age groups. 

Other signals from the civil society organizations including signals on the demographic challenges, the functioning of municipalities and the mechanisms at their disposal for funding core development projects, signals connected to initiatives and policies that can improve the health of our citizens, however for the time being, we wanted to experiment with this intangible foresight infrastructure for collecting insights and data on probable futures, and how we can include these insights in both UNDP programing, but also in future-oriented projects, where we support national institutions. 

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The authors of this text would like to thank the Civil Society Organizations that took the time to participate in our ‘signals scanning’ exercise, our UNDP colleagues Marija Karaeva, Igor Izotov as well as our collaborator Jurij Kobal that gave us valuable advice on how to frame this article.