Craft post-MDG goals, UN official urges Kenyans

Kenya: Safaricom Foundation and the United Nations have called on Kenyans to participate in the crafting of a new set of sustainable development goals (SDGs) for adoption globally from September 2015.

UN millennium campaign programme analyst Nardos Hagos said the SDGs are aimed at completely eradicating most of the world problems and taking over from the Millennium Development Goals, which UN member States adopted as a development framework from 2000 to 2015.

The new SDGs aim to eradicate extreme poverty, increase the number of children with access to quality education, reverse threats and effects of climate change and create safety nets to protect the poorest millions in the world by the year 2030.

The World Bank last year reported that Kenya’s poverty rate had reduced from about 47 per cent in 2005 to between 34 and 42 per cent.

Set  target

“Kenyans are still a long way to go because the set target for the 2015 is 26 per cent,” said Hagos.

The entire process of formulating these goals and targets in Kenya will be engineered by Ambassador Macharia Kamau, who was last year nominated by the UN to co-chair the global negotiations of the Open Working Groups alongside Csaba Körösi from Hungary.

The pair was mandated to come up with the draft report, including goals and targets, which will be submitted to the UN in July this year for consideration and eventual adoption by member States in 2015.

Sanda Ojiambo from Safaricom Foundation said the campaign dubbed Action 2015.KE is aimed at educating, informing and including Kenyans in coming up with the proposed goals that will soon be submitted to the UN.