My office was pleased to take part in the Africa Social Impact Summit Global Action Forum at the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly, hosted by Sterling One Foundation with UNFPA and RALLY Africa as Strategic Co-Hosts, alongside United Nations Nigeria, the Federal Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning, and Global Compact Nigeria.

Convened under the theme of Financing for Development: Building Resilience and Transforming Emerging Economies, the Forum carried the conversation from Lagos to New York around a question that will shape the coming decade, which is how Africa might unlock and deploy new pools of capital at the scale that resilient economies and sustainable development genuinely require. Having served as a Member of the United Nations Global Compact since 2018, we at the Wellbeing Foundation Africa have long worked toward the answer.

The delegation was glad to reconnect with Ms Mariarosa Cutillo Blake, Chief of the Private Sector and Civil Society Branch at UNFPA, whose work in drawing private capital toward the health and rights of women and girls speaks directly to the purpose of this convening.

That maternal health now sits among the investment priorities named in New York is a welcome recognition of what those of us in this field have long understood, which is that the health of a mother is not a cost to be carried but a foundation upon which the prosperity of a nation is built, and that what is invested in her returns to the household she leads, to the workforce she sustains, and to every generation that follows her. My hope is that the commitments made in that room travel home with those who made them, into the budgets, the institutions and the communities where they will be measured.

 

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