President Paul Kagame has said that the world has learned valuable lessons from the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which were set in 2000 and are due to be replaced with a new set of global goals, at the United Nations General Assembly this week.

Kagame, who has been a co-chair of the MDGs Advocacy Group, was speaking on Thursday at the Columbia University World Leaders Forum in the United States ahead of the launch of the world’s new development framework, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), the successor to the MDGs.

The MDGs, which had eight goals and 18 targets, sought to significantly reduce hunger and poverty, minimise deaths from preventable and treatable diseases and accelerate socio-economic development around the world.

"Poverty is part of the experience for millions of Africans and beyond, who need no reminder of what it feels like to be trapped in its brutal grip,” the President said during a session moderated by Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network.

The Head of State said: "When some say MDG efforts fell short, I say: that’s fine, at least something was learned”. He observed that when the MDGs were introduced some 15 years ago, Rwanda "was coming out of a dark period of our history, getting the debts of the previous governments cleared”.

He observed that when the MDGs were introduced some 15 years ago, Rwanda "was coming out of a dark period of our history, getting the debts of the previous governments cleared”.

"It was a moment at which we were most intensively engaged, in working out how to forge a new national consensus, on the most pressing issues facing us.

"These ranged from the particular problems of recovering from Genocide, to the challenges of development policy, that every growing country has to deal with,” he said.

Kagame pointed out that the MDGs were "timely, in creating a new basis, for the development partnerships necessary to rebuild our country, and create prosperity in the years ahead.”

For Rwanda, the President said, MDGs "linked the national vision for development to a wider global context, and was well aligned with changes Rwandans wanted to see in their lives”.

"The work of implementing the MDGs helped to build trust with funding partners, while keeping the locus of responsibility where we believed it had to rest, with ourselves,” he said. "It informed us and our partners, whether or not we were on the right track”.

And as the world ushers in the new Global Goals, Kagame said, it was time to pause and ask, "what will improve and make development sustainable?”

This is a complex question, he noted. "But let’s simplify the answer, by looking at development as a triangle”.

The first point, Kagame explained, are solutions – good ideas and policies. "The second point, is money; the financing to implement the programmes”.

And the third necessity which of often overlooked, he added, is the interaction between citizens and their leaders and partners. "That is good politics”.

"Sustainable development is not about what ‘we’, all of us here, do for them, but about the choices they make each day, over and over. We are working to provide the ways and the means to improve their lives, but it is also important to take the time to connect with these citizens, because in the end, they are the ones who implement these good ideas,” Kagame said.

He added: "We can start by recognising the many contributions and quantify that citizens themselves make. These amounts may look small compared to other sources of financing, but it’s a big deal”.

"Their contributions range from using their own money to buy necessary inputs, to time spent in community meetings, learning about new and better ways of doing things, to absorbing risks now in order to make gains in the future”.  

These are important measures of the commitment of citizens and communities, without which there would be little development, the President noted. "Development is what happens when citizens are convinced about the logic and pace of change.

"Country systems must help people to understand their problems, and collaborate to find solutions, including serving as a conduit for development partnerships”.

Sharing Rwanda’s experience, Kagame said: "For Rwanda, there is nothing casual about the term "lessons learned”. We have been changed by real learning from our experiences and circumstances. And therefore we have had to do things differently, earning us different results”.

"At the core of our political mobilisation work, are the principles of inclusiveness, taking responsibility, and building consensus”.

In Rwanda, he observed, state effectiveness is derived from success at forging a common national vision. ‘This has enabled faster and deeper development results. And explains why the results achieved, sometimes far surpass available resources”.

The country is one of the few that have fully achieved several MDGs and made significant progress on all the others.

"The SDGs are the next chapter in global collaboration on development, and hopefully, a new opportunity to move away, from the business as usual mode,” Kagame said.

"The goals are more ambitious, and some would even say less focused. That is to be expected, given the progress of MDGs, and also the reality that, the most stubborn forms of poverty, may be much harder to eradicate”.

What’s key, he said, is that "we have a new template, for cooperation and dialogue for the next generation”.

For the SDGs to succeed, the President observed, "we need to have a more serious conversation, about the forms of governance and democratic participation, required to get there”.

"The challenge for all of us, is to close the triangle of sustainable development. The SDGs offer hope, of making the importance, meaning, and most importantly, practice of good politics, more widely understood,” he added.

He called on leaders to "work to complement the new SDG framework, with a genuine effort, to objectively assess the degree of citizen buy-in and involvement, in decision-making and accountability”.

It is up to us, to make the most of this new opportunity, he added.