Mulamula: We’ll embrace Commonwealth plans

Dar es Salaam. The government is mulling a plan that will focus on improving information and communication technology (ICT), youth involvement, public private partnerships (PPP) with foreign countries, gender equality and women’s empowerment as part of implementing resolutions of the just ended Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM).

This was revealed in Dar es Salaam yesterday by the Minister of Foreign Affairs and East African Cooperation, Ms Liberata Mulamula, when she briefed journalists regarding the 26th CHOGM which was held from June 19 to 25 in Kigali, Rwanda.

“Despite agreeing on several resolutions such as fundamental political values of democracy, gender equality and inclusive development at the CHOGM, Tanzania is coming up with a strategic framework so that it could easily implement the issues that had been agreed upon so that in the next CHOGM, we can explain the progress,” she said.

She said Tanzania has been doing a lot to improve youth livelihood, availability of employment for youth, gender equality, expanding ICT and business partnership, noting that coming up with a strategic framework would be a catalyst to boosting the implementation of such issues in the country.

She said Tanzania’s delegation to the CHOGM involved players from the public and private sectors who presented a total of 115 projects that seek investment funds, including in form of PPP from outside the country.

She said the heads of state welcomed efforts to end malaria in Commonwealth countries by 2023 and that they committed to working towards ending the disease by 2030.

“Formulation of a strategic framework seeks to improve efficiency when implementing CHOGM resolutions,” she said.

Heads of state resolved to continue to work in cooperation with national, regional and international partners to defeat the Covid-19 pandemic and transition towards longer term Covid -19 control.

She said that they committed to increasing efforts to support affordable, timely, equitable access to quality health services, including sexual and reproductive health services, and safe, efficacious, and affordable medicines, diagnostics, therapeutics, and vaccines.

Other commitments include promoting good nutrition and fighting malnutrition, and determined to take bold, multisectoral coordinated action to reduce the incidence of non-communicable diseases.