States should align progress to growth goals

Delegates during the opening session of the 10th WTO Ministerial Conference in KICC, Nairobi, on December 15, 2015. Governments and organisations need not only seek assistance but also collaboration opportunities. PHOTO | SALATON NJAU | NATION MEDIA GROUP 

In Summary

• The adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was effectively a second shot at comprehensive development by world nations.
• However, beneath this veneer of grim statistics are philanthropies — individuals and organisations — issuing fat cheques every day in support of development work around the world.

By VICTOR OLUOCH
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In 2000, the 189 member states of the United Nations committed to pursuing a set of goals within the first 15 years of the new millennium.

The eight goals were to inject momentum and a holistic approach to development in the world.

As once described by Bill Gates, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) had become a type of global report card for the fight against poverty.

Last September, at the end of the final year of the MDGs, few countries from both the developing and the developed world had managed to produce a clean score sheet of straight As.

The adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was effectively a second shot at comprehensive development by world nations.

One of the reasons that has been attributed to the less-than-satisfactory performance on the MDGs is the failure by players to leverage the unifying power of that development regime.

Certainly, many nations and organisations have learnt their lessons while a few have not.

Like MDGs, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) come with an inherent power of syncing development work of all shades into one massive force.

Any organisation or institution hoping to contribute meaningfully to development must think of tying its goals to at least one of the SDGs.

By being part of a global march for development, players are better placed to drive the development agenda than when acting alone.

Among the goodies linked with the involvement with the SDGs is the relative ease with which SDGs-oriented programmes, large and small, stand to access financial and technical support from the donor community.

Recent statistics show that poverty still pervades the world, even as the number of the world’s super-rich is growing exponentially.

ECONOMIC PROGRAMME

Oxfam warned ahead of the 2016 annual World Economic Forum that the combined wealth of the richest 1 per cent will overtake that of the other 99 per cent of people next year unless the current trend of rising inequality is checked.

However, beneath this veneer of grim statistics are philanthropies — individuals and organisations — issuing fat cheques every day in support of development work around the world.

To underscore the need for alignment even at the back end, SDG funders have created the SDG Philanthropy Platform primarily to create synergy between the key global funders.

Even locally, philanthropies have begun to collaborate on SDG funding. In fact, in donor lingo, SDG funding will soon be the new development funding.

The fact that the donor fraternity is in sync presents an even higher threshold for governments and programme implementers.

Having been part of the consultative processes that yielded the SDGs, governments of nation states certainly have an idea of how to anchor this new global vision on their development policies.

For the pursuit of SDGs to take root in Kenya, county governments too have to be brought on board.

With technical assistance from the United Nations system through UNDP, Marsabit county recently became the first one in the country to prepare and adopt an SDG-conscious county integrated development plan.

ACHIEVING RESULTS

Governments and organisations need not only seek assistance but also collaboration opportunities.

The recent launch of a cross-border peace and socio-economic programme in Moyale by President Kenyatta and Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, for instance, is proof of what collaborative partnerships for development can yield.

In more or less the same way nation states can work together on development, entities as small as CBOs, youth groups, and even community policing and neighbourhood waste management initiatives are better off in contact with their neighbours and the millions of others working on the same goal around the world.

Aligning development goals to SDGs by far offers the best opportunity to achieving results at both ends of the local-global development continuum.

Mr Oluoch is a communication expert in the field of peace and development. nyakwarma@gmail.com