The topic of collaboration for SDG (Sustainable Development Goals) goals
is quite an interesting one
and when I get into conversations about SDGs in general, particularly
within the African context, I think about
a very popular proverb
or saying that we have, which is, “If you want to go fast,
go alone, if you want to go far, go together.”
But when you think about the SDGs
and the progress that we need to make, we are more than halfway
to the 2030 target, and we've not achieved half of the targets.
And so that reality suggests that we need to go both fast and far.
So how do you do that?
I think collaboration,
in-country with all the relevant
stakeholders, I think is one of the ways that we can do that.
And I think collaboration allows two things:
it allows efficiency and effectiveness.
So from an effectiveness standpoint, think about situations where you bring
in the private sector, the public sector, the social sector together,
are you able to bring the best ideas from each of these different sectors
and innovate effectively?
And that innovation leads to effectiveness, essentially going farther.
From an efficiency standpoint,
sometimes when we each try to solve these problems in silos,
we don't realize we're trying to solve the same thing and doing the same thing.
And so there's a lot of inefficiency and a lot of waste.
And in fact, in environment, in our context where we don't have
a lot of resources, you don't want to be wasting.
Every single resource needs to achieve the highest impact.
And so that's another opportunity.
Bringing everyone together; collaborating allows us to ensure
that there's very limited waste.
So in reality, collaboration
actually allows us to go both fast and far.