Gothenburg, 26 June 2025 – The United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), through its Learning and Knowledge Development Facility (LKDF) and with the support of the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), convened the LKDF Forum 2025 under the theme “Skills Development and Local Value Addition: Ensuring Sustainable Growth in Global Supply Chains.” The Forum took place both online and in-person at the World of Volvo in Gothenburg, Sweden.   

Achieving sustainable and ethical supply chains requires a transformation in industrial processes, business relations, and workforce capabilities, with skills development and local value addition playing a central role in this transition. Together, building skills and value enhances supply chain resilience by reducing dependency on external inputs and mitigating risks associated with global disruptions.  For emerging markets, building local capabilities diversifies economies and creates better jobs, while for multinational companies, localizing supply chains offers strategic benefits like market growth, risk mitigation, and compliance with local regulations. Achieving sustainable and ethical supply chains demands transforming industrial processes, business relationships, and workforce skills, with local value addition playing a key role by reducing dependency on external inputs and strengthening resilience.  

UNIDO’s Director General Gerd Müller opened the event by calling for greater investment in skills for responsible, future-oriented supply chains, declaring “To build competitive and resilient supply chains with more local value addition, more high value manufacturing and services, more market access, [and] more prosperity, skills development is absolutely key.”   

Maria Tegborg, Acting Head of the Global Department of Sida, echoed this message, underscoring the role of technical and vocational education and training (TVET) in bridging skills gaps and improving economic outcomes, stating “we must continue to invest in skills development to ensure that supply chains operate responsibly.”   

The Forum highlighted how localizing skills and competencies across value chains—particularly in manufacturing, energy, healthcare, and industrial processing—is key to enabling multinational corporations and developing countries to thrive.   

UNIDO’s Virpi Stucki stressed the need for systemic approaches to workforce development, explaining that strong policy frameworks and transparent supply chains must support sustainable value addition. “When combined with strong policy direction and stakeholder engagement along the way, developing the labour force can be a continuing input into national benefit,” she noted.    

The importance of anchoring programs in local priorities and ambitions was also a recurring theme. Enabel’s Charlotte Vanstallen stressed, “It all starts, I think, with the local objective and the local focus and the [local] ambition… it cannot be mentioned enough.” Participants agreed that without a strong local perspective, initiatives risk being poorly adapted, underutilized, or unsustainable. By engaging local stakeholders early and ensuring programs respond to specific community and market needs, efforts become more demand-driven, effective, and scalable, ultimately fostering stronger ownership and longer-lasting impact.   

The discussion extended beyond the need for technical skills, recognizing the importance of soft skills, sustainability literacy, ESG compliance, and attention to the informal economy, which still represents the majority of employment in many parts of the world. In this context, Caterina Occhio, Economic Inclusion and ESG Advisor at UNIDO, emphasized the power of social procurement models to professionalize informal labour, raise compliance standards, and promote living wages—contributing to what she described as a “culture shift” for sustainable sourcing.   

Above all else, the Forum underscored the need for strong cross-sectoral partnerships to close the skills gap across supply chains. UNIDO’s Public-Private Development Partnerships (PPDP) were highlighted as an effective model for aligning vocational training and education with industry demands. By leveraging the strengths of both sectors, these partnerships foster targeted training programs that integrate technical skills with sustainability practices.   

The Forum welcomed 37 in-person participants and 231 online attendees, drawing representatives from public and private sectors, civil society, academia, and international organizations. Among the distinguished participants were representatives from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), the European Commission, the African Union Development Agency-NEPAD, the African Development Bank Group (AfDB), the World Trade Organization (WTO), the Volvo Group, Siemens Healthineers, Enabel, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), Festo Didactic, and numerous Swedish and international companies representing a wide range of global value chains.   

The first day of LKDF Forum 2025 concluded with a strong call to action: align national industrial policies with education and training reforms, strengthen cooperation at regional and global levels, and place local communities at the centre of development strategies. Participants were united in the view that sustainable industrialization will depend on holistic, inclusive, and partnership-based approaches to skills development and value addition.  

The second day of the LKDF Forum 2025 featured a co-creation workshop facilitated by UNIDO’s LKDF team in partnership with the Volvo Group. Participants from public, private, and development sectors engaged in strategic discussions aimed at fostering actionable, cross-sector collaboration to strengthen skills ecosystems. This interactive session enabled meaningful exchanges and connections among attendees, laying the groundwork for future partnerships across industries and generating thirteen new PPDP project ideas. The day continued with a guided visit to the Volvo Trucks Experience Facility, where participants learned about Volvo’s history, explored the latest innovations in truck manufacturing, and even had the opportunity to test drive several vehicles. 

 

For more information, please contact:   

The Learning and Knowledge Development Facility (LKDF)   

lkd-facility@unido.org   

 

Official recording of the LKDF Forum 2025 will be available in due course on the LKDF YouTube channel. (https://www.youtube.com/@UNIDO_LKDF)