Ghana has taken the bold step to incorporate the post-2015 Development Agenda and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations General Assembly into her 40-year Development Plan.

The Plan is currently being formulated by the National Development Planning Commission.

The SDGs are a successor framework to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and they are to compliment the aims and objectives of the MDGs which end by December 2015.

Ms Hanna Serwaa Tetteh, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, who announced this at a press briefing on Ghana’s participation in the 70th Session of the UN General Assembly, said like the SDGs, Ghana would ensure it was collectively developed to engender universal ownership and acceptability.

She said it would also promote its wider dissemination, application and implementation at the national, regional and community levels and establish internal mechanisms to monitor performance and reporting.

Ms Tetteh said the SDGs, though global in perspective, were also adaptable to the conditions of member states and were of universal application with flexibility for different national realities, capacities, priorities and levels of development.

She said: “For African countries and peoples, the agenda expresses our aspirations and hope for building viable and sustainable economies that can transform our societies, and we have been very active in the process of deliberations on these new goals through the development of a common African position before the debate started which helped us to influence the final outcome.”

The theme for the General Assembly Debate for the 70th Session is “The United Nations at 70: The Road Ahead for Peace, Security and Human Rights,” and will start from September 24 to October 5.

Ms Tetteh said the UN could not have chosen a more appropriate theme in the current international environment plagued by threats to peace “but which have implications for all of us, no matter where we are or where we live”.

She said President John Dramani Mahama would lead Ghana’s delegation to participate in a high-Level event on the operationalisation of the Post-2015 Development Agenda for African Industrialization.

The event, she said, would bring together African leaders, heads of UN Organisations and key development actors to discuss concrete partnerships for the effective operationalisation of the post-2015 Development Agenda in Africa with particular reference to building resilient infrastructure, promoting inclusive and sustainable industrialisation and innovation.

The discussion is expected to focus on how to forge stronger regional, inter-regional and global co-operation for inclusive and sustainable industrial development especially through south-south co-operation and new partnership models.

Ms Tetteh said President Mahama would also hold a number of bilateral meetings and participate in other side events.

Ghana would organise a diaspora science, technology and innovation conference at Columbia University to bring together Ghanaian experts in the field of technology, science and industry to build synergies for the eventual transfer of expertise to support sustainable, industrial and technological development in Ghana, she said.

There would also be a ceremony to sign the US-ECOWAS Business Initiative, a Memorandum of Understanding establishing the Principles of the US Chamber of Commerce Partnership with ECOWAS.

She said the signing ceremony was a follow-up to the signing of the Trade and Investment Framework Agreement between the US Government and ECOWAS in 2014 and it would be preceded by a round-table discussion on energy in West-Africa with US senior executives on the topic; “Gas to Industrialization, Unlocking Natural Gas for Sustainable and Inclusive Growth”.

She therefore thanked the technocrats, civil society organisations and all who worked tirelessly on Ghana’s contributions to the crafting of the post-2015 Development Agenda and assured Ghanaians of government’s commitment to the ideals of the UN.

Ms Christine Evans-Klock, United Nations Resident Co-ordinator, called on the media to play its advocacy role once the SDGs was launched to enhance its adoption in Ghana to better the living conditions of the people.