The Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting 2022 (CHOGM2022) will be held from June 20 to 25 in Kigali, Rwanda. This is the 26th CHOGM since 1971, and the second to be held in Africa after that held in Uganda in 2007. 

The New Times’ Emmanuel Ntirenganya had an interview with Commonwealth Secretary-General, Patricia Scotland QC on May 04, 2022, in Kigali, about what this major meeting means for this voluntary association of 54 countries home to 2.5 billion people, opportunities that it presents, tackling rising cost of living, and destructive climate change effects.

Scotland was in Rwanda attending the 12th Regional Conference of Heads of Anti-corruptionagencies in Commonwealth Africa, which took place  from May 3-6, and assessing the progress made in preparation for CHOGM 2022. 

What is your take on Rwanda’s readiness to host CHOGM2022?

This is an enormous moment for the Commonwealth. You know that the last Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting took place in 2018 in London. And, we had hoped that Rwanda would be hosting it in June 2020.

So, it has been a great disappointment that, because of the Coivid-19 pandemic, which has taken almost a million of our citizens across the Commonwealth, we have had to delay CHOGM until June 20th this year. But in those four years, Rwanda has prepared extraordinarily well for CHOGM.  

I had the benefit of going to see CHOGM venues, going to see the business centre where the main events are going to happen, and they are beautiful. And the preparations that have been made for CHOGM to receive not just all the 54 leaders of the Commonwealth, but also the thousands of people who are going to come for the forums.

You know there are four – there is the people’s forum, the women’s forum, the youth forum and then the business forum. So, this is an amazing moment for our Commonwealth. 

Is there any adjustment made to CHOGM initial programme as a result of Covid-19, or any other factor?

We have been determined that this CHOGM, and its theme of innovating, transforming, and promoting and leaving no one behind, is going to be pivotally  productive for all of us. 

So, we have changed the programme in as much as we are really looking at recovery now. No one anticipated this Covi-19 pandemic. It has caused devastating loss not just in loss of lives, but [also] damage to the economy, particularly for those Member States who are heavily dependent on tourism.

Some of our Member States are 70 percent reliant on tourism or tourism related services. So, for those member States, it’s been devastating economically, as well as socially as well as in health terms. 

So, what we are going to be looking at in the change that has brought, is we are going to look at how can we recover, how do we create jobs for those who are in need of them? How can we make sure that 60 percent of the Commonwealth [population] which is under the age of 30, are able to have aspirations, inspirations and practical assistance to make sure that they meet their developmental goals? 

But also, we have to reach the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. So, our focus now will very much be on transformation and recovery; coming together, sharing our best practices, our knowledge, our expertise to help one another overcome these difficulties,    

What opportunities are expected at CHOGM2022, and how could they help address problems such as unemployment, especially among the young people?

We have the youth forum where we will be specifically looking at the young entrepreneurs, and how we enable them to get better. 

But look at the trade initiative that we’ve got. The good thing about our Commonwealth is that we share so much in common: We share common language, common structure in terms of parliamentary structure, we have similar institutions which share the rule of law. All of that makes us more than 21 percent cheaper, easier, faster for us to do trade one with the other. 

Just before Covid, we had almost $700 billion with the intra-Commonwealth trade. That took a dip [because of pandemic impact], but now it seems to be going back to that [$]700 billion. 

But, we hope to be at [$]1 trillion by 2030. And you know that in Africa, African countries have become party to the African Continental Free Trade Agreement. So, when you look at the opportunities that brings to Africa and to our Commonwealth, together with the trade facilitation, we believe that working together as the Commonwealth, we will be able to enhance trade, particularly digital trade. 

And, there will be an emphasis on closing that digital divide because many of our Member States have been challenged during this time with internet connectivity opportunity. So, we are looking very trenchantly as to how we can accelerate the speed of transmission in those countries who must not be left behind. 

And you know, in Covid-19, there have been huge developments on the way in which we produce vaccines. But, we learnt some painful lessons about the need to strengthen the regional structure. So, we will also be looking at how we do that too. And the fact that Covid-19 vaccines were very difficult for a number of our countries to get hold of; I said that we were all in the same storm when it came to Covid-19, but we definitely were not in the same boat. 

Some of our Members are 95 percent covered by vaccines, but there are some in Africa who are only 10 percent covered. Now, we’ve also got to look at how we close those divides. .. We are going to look together at how we can assist our Member States because our of the things we have to appreciate is that, tragically, this pandemic may not be our last pandemic; so we have to learn the lessons from this pandemic to help us to better prepare for the next. 

And there are huge opportunities. We are looking at, you know, could Rwanda become a financial centre for Africa, what about creating a health city here, bearing in mind that so many of our colleagues in various countries in Africa had to go outside of Africa to get treatment. And it’s a wonderful opportunity to think about how we could have a health city within the African borders in order to address this. 

The Covid-19 and the Russia-Ukraine war have had an impact on commodity prices, hence raising the cost of living for citizens. Could CHOGM2022 help address such a problem?

These are issues that we will be discussing, because of course, as this crisis has unfolded, there has been a lot of understanding on what we need to do ourselves, to enhance our food security. So, it is a difficulty, but it is also an opportunity. How do we improve agribusiness throughout the Commonwealth, how do we make each of our countries more sustainable, how do we share technology and expertise to enhance the opportunity that we all have to feed our people? It made us think again. And so, in the Commonwealth we are looking at a green and blue economy.  

And agribusiness, the modern form of agriculture, the green economy means we are going to look at sustainable development.

And we are looking at how we use our blue economy tools for those countries who are bordered by sea and ocean.

There has been an issue of climate change that has been resulting in devastating effects on agriculture, infrastructure and living conditions of people. How is CHOGM going to contribute to tackling that?

We have been addressing and focusing on climate change since 1989 at the Langkawi conference [in Malaysia].

If you look at that Langkawi declaration [on the environment], you will see that the Commonwealth said, right back in 1989, that climate change poses an existential threat to our world. 

And we continue to work hard. And so, particularly in relation to land, we first of all did a charter in relation to the blue charter which was how we manage our oceans. But what we saw is that there is a rising level of desertification, drought, which is probably killing more people than the hurricanes and the cyclones. And so, we knew that we had to come together to address those issues too. 

We are looking at how we will use satellite data to identify changes in atmospheric conditions, so that we can prevent and prepare for these incidents. 

And so, from that came the need to have an action plan for how we address climate change particularly how climate affects the land. And from that what I hope will be agreed in Kigali, which is the Living Lands Charter – how do we come together to protect our land to make sure that the devastation that comes with desertification and drought is addressed and we have better land management so we are able to feed our people and reach their aspirations. 

We understand that there is a big gap between the money that is needed and the money our countries have. So, in 2015, the Commonwealth Heads of Government asked the Secretariat to set up a climate finance access centre to address these issues. As a result, when I became the Secretary-General, it was my responsibility to respond to that request. 

So, as a result, we created the climate finance access hub, and with only £1.5 million, we have already delivered almost $50 million into the hands of our Member States. But, we have $760 million in the pipeline. 

We donate by putting a climate finance advisor in a number of countries who have asked us to do so. Now, my aspiration, my hope would be to put in every country who requested it or needed it, a climate finance advisor so that we could make applications for adaptation and mitigation and get the money into the hands of our Member States. So, we won’t just be talking about change, we would actually be financing change.