Invest in education, LDCs told
Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation Director General Patricia Danzi has urged Least Developed Countries (LDCs) to invest in the education of their citizens.
She said this during the fifth United Nations LDC5 meeting in Doha, Qatar, on Sunday.
At the meeting, representatives of development partners, members of civil society and other stakeholders shared ideas on how to lift resource poor people out of poverty.
Speaking during the first thematic round table, held under the theme ‘Investing in People in LDCs to Leave No One Behind’, which is one of the six key areas of focus of the Doha Programme of Action, Danzi said LDCs have the potential to turn around their economies, but only if they facilitate access to education.
President Lazarus Chakwera convened the roundtable alongside Andrzej Duda, who is the President of Poland.
Danzi said one of the areas of interest for most investors in developing countries is the level of education of the workforce.
“Geneva, for us, is a place for education… we believe that you cannot take education away; once it’s given, it’s a gift,” she said.
World Bank Eastern and Southern Africa Vice President Victoria Kwakwa, another speaker on the panel, highlighted the issue of gender equality as International Women’s Day approaches.
Kwakwa observed that there has been a lot of progress towards gender equality, but that there is still a lot of work to be done.
She made several propositions, including the need to gather data on what works and how to make changes that would accelerate progress in gender equality.
“Gender equality and women empowerment is good and important in itself but, also, because it has so much positive spill-over effects,” Kwakwa said.
According to the UN, the high-level thematic round tables are focused on consensus-building to renew and reinvigorate partnerships and mobilise additional international support measures and actions in support of LDCs, to enhance their resilience to multiple shocks and accelerate the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.
Other areas of focus of the Doha Programme of Action include innovation, structural transformation, international trade, climate change and international partnerships.
