State
House, Banjul, January 8, 2019 – A high level meeting between permanent
secretaries, senior government officials from departments and other agencies,
and the GK Partners have been considering ways to implement a shared vision of
the need to significantly advance The Gambia.
The meeting, presided over by the Secretary
General and Head of the Civil Service Muhammad B.S. Jallow, was convened at the
State House on Wednesday, January 08, 2020. It discussed strategies to
decentralise focal persons for the Migration and Sustainable Development Goals
Programme of the NDP in all sectors across government.
The MSDG project is part of the NDP, and many
of the activities within it are part of the flagship programme. As part of the
GK Partners’ agreement with Gambia government, there is a whole month dedicated
to celebrating the country’s diaspora which is considered its eight region.
“Besides the creation of a Diaspora
Directorate at Ministry of Foreign Affairs, there has been some pronouncements
at both policy levels and non-state actors to realising the set objectives of
the MSDGs. Now, it is thought prudent to set up focal points for this programme
across all government sectors,” Secretary General, Mr. Jallow told the meeting.
GK Partners have been organising annual
diaspora forum for the third executive year this year. This new strategy will
ensure that there is decentralisation of the programme throughout government
institutions.
Professor Gibril Faal, the Director of GK
Partners and the Migration and SDGs Programme in The Gambia project, explained
that the programme came through extensive consultation.
The programme has widely consulted the
Diaspora, the business community, NGOs and government through meetings, workshops,
webinars, and online research. It tried to understand how the government can
engage the diaspora to partake in the NDP in an enhanced manner.
“We spoke to them on the difficulties and
practical challenges they face in their attempts to engage with development
policies and practice in The Gambia,” he said.
It also explored the difficulties faced by
actors on the ground that are on the receiving end of dealing with the
diaspora. That is why the programme is developed in such a manner that opportunities
and challenges on both sides have been recognised.
The commonality and the shared vision is the
fact that there is consensus that The Gambia needs to significantly move
towards advancement. It becomes a question of what each actor can do towards
this objective, Faal explained.
