Nairobi,KENYA African governments have been urged to embrace more issues of education, empowerment, equity and employment, popularly coined as 4Es, as a means of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals SDGs.
During the 1st day of Africa-China Conference on Population and Development currently ongoing at the Hilton Hotel Nairobi, that was attended by 15 African countries and China the UN Resident coordinator Siddharth Chatterjee said that without education the countries would not experience economic growth.
“Sub-Sahara Africa loses $95bn every year because of inequality. In Kenya for every 100 Kenyans that are employed, there are 81 dependents where half of them are women. Rather than sit at home, this is a productive group that needs to be empowered and join the workforce,” Mr. Chatterjee noted.
Mr. Chatterjee urged African governments to emulate China which opened up employment opportunities which took its population out of poverty and placed it in the Middle Class bracket.
The Kenyan delegation was represented by Irungu Nyakera who is the PS for planning and statistics who spoke on behalf of the cabinet secretary for devolution and planning Mwangi Kiunjuri who urged African countries to understand the corelation between the population and economic growth.
” It is against such a background that debate on relationship between socio-economic development and population is accorded high priority in developing nations.Understanding linkage between the two is key to ensuring inclusive economic growth.” Nyakera said.
The sustainable development goals were adopted by the United nations general assembly in September 2015 replacing the millennium development goals which expired in 2015.
The proposed SDG’s are 17 goals expected to shape global agenda in social and economic development for the next 15 years.
The Africa -China conference on population and development is expected to wind up on 19th April 2017 and the theme of the conference is “Harnessing the Demographic Dividend in Africa” which aims at maximizing Africa’s potential through its population.
The Kenyan ministry of devolution has commended the theme of the conference saying that it was in line with the African Union assembly’s priorities in the utilization of population to drive socio-economic growth.
