Local ownership of post-2015 devt agenda critical

President Paul Kagame, addressing the 68th United Nations General Assembly in New York, on Wednesday, called on world leaders to lay out solid strategies for a post-2015 development agenda, saying there was need to go beyond business as usual.This year’s General Assembly had a special focus on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), with a view to scaling up momentum in the implementation of each of the eight goals as the 2015 deadline looms.Some developing countries have performed fairly well in some areas and poorly in others.In Rwanda, statistics indicate that the country is well on course to achieving five of the MDGs. They include; access to universal primary education, promotion of gender equality and women empowerment, reduction of maternal and child mortality rates, and combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases.It’s good news.Yet this could not have been possible without the government owning the MDGs and Rwandans getting actively involved with these programmes. Several other countries share the same experiences.There are immense lessons to learn from the last 13 years since the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals. One of them is that great achievements were registered particularly in countries and communities where these Goals were fully owned and incorporated in national development agenda. Little progress was made where these Goals remained outside the mainstream national development efforts.With the focus now turning to the post-2015 agenda, it’s critical that stakeholders work to ensure that global development goals are owned at the national and local levels to increase chances of getting better results and thus impacting billions of lives and creating a better world.

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Local ownership of post-2015 devt agenda critical