S Supporting Sustainability for a Decent Work and Economic Growth in Ghana Julia Bello-Bravo 1 and Anne Namatsi Lutomia 2 1 Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA 2 Department of Entomology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA Definitions Goal 8 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aims to promote decent, inclusive, and sustainable economic growth and full/productive employment for all (United Nations 2015). According to the United Nations (UN), sustain- able economic growth is foregrounded where ben- efits exist for men and women equally and inequalities are reduced while sustaining the envi- ronment. Further, inclusive economic growth requires decent work – work that is secure, safe, with fair wages, and equally accessible to men and women (United Nations 2015). Introduction The Sustainable Development Goals or Global Goals based on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development were adopted by more than 150 world leaders on 25 September 2015. Seven- teen goals were identified with the mission of eradicating poverty and hunger in the world, pro- tecting the environment, and fostering peace and inclusive societies, among other aims. The SDG document comprises 17 goals, 169 targets, and 230 indicators. The precedent of the SDGs was the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), launched in 2001, with a global agenda to reduce poverty by 2015 (UNDP 2015). All the SDGs are interconnected to end poverty by 2030. In partic- ular, action plans to accomplish poverty reduction by national governments need to understand, practice, and recognize the linkages between mul- tiple development goals and work in areas where weakness and disparities are still visible. Some of the gaps in some African countries – including gender and socioeconomic inequality, illiteracy rate, and the urban and rural divide – require measures, strategies, and decisions from each government that incorporate decisions as part of their national planning, processes, and policies for poverty reduction. Notably, providing flexibility to national gov- ernments for working toward 2030 Agenda goals remains challenging. According to Gornitzka and Pipa (2019), two main approaches address this challenge. First, national governments can adopt a whole-of-government approach, which includes setting national priorities based on their own cir- cumstances while investing internationally to © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 W. Leal Filho et al. (eds.), Decent Work and Economic Growth, Encyclopedia of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71058-7_120-1