Held annually in September alongside the opening session of the United Nations General Assembly, Social Good summit that aims at uniting global citizens and progressive thought leaders around a common theme, #2030NOW, aspires to provide the solutions to the challenges touching on global goals.
Organised by the Kijiji in partnership with UNDP Kenya, Alliance Francaise and Unreasonable East Africa, this year’s summit kicked off a series of talks on the status of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Kenya by highlighting the 17th Goal that’s expected to “revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development and its potential to fulfil the promise of a better world by 2030”.
“Transparency is the starting point,” said Adam Lane, senior director of public affairs at Huawei Technologies. “Partnerships are about being realistic. Set higher target and lower the costs of performance. The thinking of doing more with less is what the governments should embrace. That’s the starting point.”
SDGs aim at connecting corporations, government, academia, social enterprises and grassroots organisers. In 2015, the global community adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which said that the new Agenda would be made up of 17 distinct and interconnected goals, which the world committed to achieving in the course of the next 15 years. Then UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon described them as a social contract between the world’s leaders and the people, and a blueprint for success. The consultation attracted 5 million people from across 88 countries in all the world’s regions.
But as the Millennium Development Goals, which is the predecessor of the SDGs lapsed, countries like India, China and Brazil had managed to liberate millions of people out of poverty as other countries, especially in Africa, barely improved and in some ways the situation worsened.
