President Lazarus Chakwera has highlighted the importance of the Doha Programme of Action which will focus more on six key areas that include eradicating poverty, fostering science, technology and innovation as well as addressing climate change and recovering from Covid-19 as a recovery path for the world’s most vulnerable countries.
The Malawi leader made this remarks on Thursday at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, United States of America as he endorsed the Doha Programme of Action when he was delivering a keynote address in his capacity as the Chairperson of Least Developed Countries during the first part of the Fifth United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries ( UN-LDC5).
“The Doha Programme of Action outlines steps for diversifying economies, for increasing exports and trade in Least Developed Countries hence need for a collaborative, collective, and courageous response,” Chakwera said.
He added that the Programme need to be adopted as it is the best opportunity for charting a recovery path for the world’s most vulnerable countries and Action is the only hope.
“It is ambitious because it is a programme whose aim is to show solidarity with the world’s poorest countries and for starters, societies and economies have been under attack from climate change and events happening in quicker succession than ever before,” President Chakwera said.
He gave an example of his own country Malawi who suffered deep wounds in 2019 at the hands of Cyclones Idai and Kenneth, and while those wounds are still fresh, the country has been attacked again by Tropical Storms Ana and Gombe in the last seven weeks, leaving a trail of destruction and death.
