Senior leaders of the Liberal Party (PL) have committed to uphold the values of Pan-Africansim and help entrench them in their members across the country.

The Pan-Africanism virtues, PL leaders said, will also be a key driver in enabling the country achieve its development aspirations, especially under roadmaps like the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The PL leaders said this, on Sunday, during the party’s political bureau meeting in which top party leaders were briefed on the advantages of Pan-Africanism and also given an update on how far the country has gone in implementing SDGs.

The meeting was presided over by party president Donatille Mukabalisa, who said they would intensify sensitisation of their members on both Pan-Africanism and SDGs.

"Such campaigns increase our level of participation in national development, which is something we always put forward. Our members need to always be on top of such programmes,” said Mukabalisa, who is also the Speaker of Parliament.

Addressing the meeting, Uzziel Ndagijimana, the sate minister for economic planning, assured the participants that Government will achieve the UN-sponsored Sustainable Development Goals.

"We will achieve the SDGs because we are building on a foundation laid by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and lessons learnt from them. Basing on efforts in place, we hope to have a great achievement in next 15 years,” said Ndagijimana.

SDGs are a UN initiative. Officially known as ‘Transforming our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’ is a set of seventeen aspirational "Global Goals” with 169 targets between them.

Clarisse Kanyange Seminega, the vice president of Liberal Party in Ngoma District, said it was important that such programmes are passed to leaders in different capacities, especially those who live and work outside Kigali.

Meanwhile, Protais Musoni, the chairperson of Pan-African Movement, Rwanda Chapter, said Africa needs to strive to increase its share on the global economy, where the continent exports a paltry 2 per cent.

"This can for example be improved by moving from subsistence agriculture to commercialised farming, embrace manufacturing as well as leverage the infrastructure already in place for information technology to move the country forward,” Musoni said.

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