President Akufo-Addo addressing CEOs at the Sustainable Development Goals ceremony at the Jubilee House in Accra. Pictures by Gifty Ama Lawson.
President Akufo-Addo has stressed the need for heads of various corporate institutions to consider helping to achieve the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
This, according to him, is because he sees the heads of the corporate institutions as “the primary promoters of social and economic transformation;” keys to the success of the SDGs.
Speaking at a breakfast meeting with some selected Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) at the Jubilee House yesterday, President Akufo-Addo said “I am going to bring you on board the process of making sure that these goals are implemented, and brought to a successful end.”
That, he said was because “the SDGs must not remain within the public consciousness as some abstract remote phenomenon that is debated amongst a few political leaders and bureaucrats on the floors of the General Assembly of the United Nations.”
Instead, he insisted that, “it must become an active set of goals within the public consciousness, because people can recognise that such goals do affect all of us.”
The President indicated that the goal of gender equity is one of the goals of the SDGs that must move from the area of rhetoric into reality.
“That statement is a statement that affects more than the majority of people in Ghana. We know that 52% of our population are women. When we are talking about gender equity, we are talking about what affects all women, young and old.”
On access to education, he said, “we know the importance of education in our country; we have made a huge commitment to ensuring that every Ghanaian child is able to go to school, at least within the present context to secondary school level, and it is an extremely important tool for the future development of our country.”
With the SDGs presenting the world with a unique opportunity to fight inequality on all fronts, wipe out extreme poverty, tackle the issues of climate change, and reverse the degradation and unsustainable use of our environmental resources, the President indicated that the attainment of these goals should be something that must matter in their daily lives.
“These are some of the broad goals that I am hoping to realise. We have a relatively short period to be together, but I am hoping that, in this relatively short period, and, in subsequent engagements that we are going to have, we would be able to address these goals of this meeting that we have set up,” he added.
The occasion, which was the first in a series of national breakfast meetings, as part of a stakeholder engagement strategy by the SDGs Advisory Unit, also unveiled two SDGs-related flagship initiatives – GoalMinds and the I Pledge Campaign – to help popularize the SDGs across the country.
GoalMinds is a bespoke communications portal developed by the SDGs Advisory Unit of the Office of the President of Ghana.
The initiative may also be described as an ecosystem which thrives on a fine blend of strategic interactions, call to action campaigns, data collection, sensitization, information sharing and best practice teachings.
I Plegde Campaign – #IPledgeSDGs
The ‘I Pledge Campaign’ is a photo opportunity leveraging SDGs branded footballs and paraphernalia to get different communities, stakeholders and influencers to commit to support accelerated implementation of the goals.
A key point of reference is the creation of the balls by ‘Alive and Kicking,’ an organization that makes durable sports balls in Kenya, Zambia and Ghana, keeping adults in employment, helping children play, and raising health awareness through sports.
By Charles Takyi-Boadu, Presidential Correspondent