Abuja – The UN Population Fund (UNFPA) on Monday renewed its commitment to improving reproductive healthcare delivery in Nigeria.
Ms Ratidzai Ndhlovu, the Country Representative of the fund in Nigeria, made this known in Abuja at the opening of a three-day leadership summit on demographic dividend in Africa.
Ndhlovu said UNFPA is committed to ensuring that “every pregnancy is wanted, every child birth is safe and every young person’s potential is fulfilled’’.
She said that the demographic dividends in Africa provide an enormous potential and opportunities for UNFPA to achieve this mission.
She said demographic dividend is not entirely new as Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) posited that human population grow exponentially while food production grows at an arithmetic rate.
Ndhlovu said increase awareness about the potential gains that can accrue when the relationship between population and development are considered critical many spheres especially health, education, economy and governance.
“The 1798 theory is as pertinent today as it was then, the sustainable development through population and development,’’ she said.
According to her, UNFPA has been supporting institutional capacity in demographic analysis, population and development research, and the effective translation of research into relevant policy guidance for governments.
[pro_ad_display_adzone id=”70560″]
She said the summit has been convened to deepen understanding of the demographic dividend issues and discuss ways by which donors can support seed funding to select institutions.
She said the summit would also discuss how donors can invest in their institutional resources, build institutional capacity in the demographic dividend and foster a new generation of demographic dividend experts on the continent.
The UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Nigeria, Ms Fatima Samoura, calld on African leaders to invest in young persons to secure a better for the continent.
Samoura noted that about 25 per cent of Africa’s estimated population of 1.2 billion in 2016 are youths below 25 years in many countries.
However, she said that most this productive age group were vulnerable to radicalisation, terrorism and other forms of violent attacks in the Sahel.
She identified Nigeria, Chad, Cameroun, Niger, Kenya, Uganda and Mali as some of the worst hit countries by violence.
The coordinator therefore advised governments to key into the Sustainable Development Goals to reverse the trend.
While pledging UN’s support to improve lives in the continent, Samoura said the UN system in Nigeria believes that the process of opening demographic ‘window’ in the country can be fast-tracked by leveraging on the country’s leadership.
“UN Nigeria in collaboration with government at all levels has organised series of national and regional workshops on `How Nigeria can capitalise on Demographic Dividend for Sustainable Development’ in 2014 and 2015.
“The high level advocacy fora have aimed at galvanising concrete actions for sustained discourse on capitalising Nigeria’s population dividend to attain the needed growth and development for the country,’’ she said.
According to her, the summit organised by UNFPA has demonstrated the fund’s leadership and comparative advantage in population and development with the UN family.
She said the outcome of the summit would provide the impetus for engagements with the academia and the resources required for demographic dividend initiatives.
“I look forward to receiving the outcome of this Summit to re-focus efforts of our support to Nigeria in harnessing its Demographic Dividend for Sustainable Development,’’ Samoura said. (NAN)
