‘Collaborate to deliver dev agenda’
The Commonwealth Secretary-General, Ms Patricia Scotland, has urged member countries of the organisation to collaborate to deliver the 17-goal sustainable development agenda and the Commonwealth Charter effectively.
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She said the burden of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the charter would be made lighter with effective collaboration by member countries.
She was speaking to the Daily Graphic in Accra on Friday.
Ms Scotland was in Accra to attend the 2016 edition of the international biennial conference of the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU) which was held in Africa (in Ghana) for the first time since its inception.
The conference was focused on improving access, quality and affordability of education in Commonwealth countries.
None has it all
“My aspiration is to put the wealth back into the common and the common into the wealth by ensuring that the resources spent in one member country to discover a success path will lead to a discovery for all,” she said.
She explained that by so doing, no two member countries should spend the same resources on the same path to a success, meaning that the collaboration should ensure that the discoveries, failures and successes made in one member country were shared among all member states.
Education and SDG 4
On education, Ms Scotland reiterated her call on all Commonwealth universities to increase the number of scholarships for higher education made available to Commonwealth students.
“The truth is that Commonwealth students from rich or poor families have similar abilities but the issue is about who gets the opportunity to educationally explore those skills and abilities,” she said.
She said she was optimistic that increment in scholarships would facilitate a level playing field for all Commonwealth students.
“The family’s financial background should not become a barrier to education for any Commonwealth student, and this is part of our aspiration as a unified body of countries,” she added.
Ms Scotland said the commitment by member countries to education in the Commonwealth had been profound.
She recalled that all Commonwealth Education ministers came together to discuss how to collaboratively achieve life-long education for all and how collectively member states could make a difference in educational delivery.
She said all those educational aspirations led to the facilitation of universities coming together as the ACU, which was first created in 1903, to assist one another and work in partnership.