The Minister of Planning and Economic Development, Dr. Francis Kai-Kai says the UNFPA Mid-Year Review of their work plans with implementing partners creates an opportunity to promote credible and quality evaluations that can be used for learning to improve the effectiveness, efficiency of interventions and remains critical to achieving the development priorities as set out in the Medium-Term National Development Plan (MTNDP) 2019-2023.

He made this statement while delivering his opening statement at UNFPA’s Mid-Year Review meeting on the implementation of their 2022 work plans.

“This review provides an important opportunity to jointly reflect on progress or lack thereof in implementation of the the UNFPA Country Programme and 2022 work plans”, says Minister Kai-Kai.

He said UNFPA’s overarching goals focus on ending unmet needs for family planning, preventable maternal deaths, gender-based violence and other harmful practices, while advancing the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) of 2019. These transformative goals are underpinned by the promotion of gender equality, youth empowerment and human rights, population dynamics and the strengthening of data systems and evidence to inform programming.

Dr. Kai-Kai underscored that the goals and strategies are well aligned to the MTNDP (2019-2023) and the New Direction Agenda for socio-economic growth set by His Excellency President Julius Maada Bio.

The Minister called on all key partners to play there part in ensuring that UNFPA’s mandate was implemented in a way that maximises value addition and returns on investment, while complementing the efforts of government and other partners.

On her part, Ms. Nadia Rasheed, UNFPA Country Representative appreciated the Government through the Ministry of Planning and Economic Development for providing the enabling environment through which the three transformative results are being implemented.

She said the gathering was an opportunity to take stock of the progress made as well as to review, and discuss existing challenges facing work plan implementation. She added that it came at a time when UNFPA was more than half-way through the second year of implementation of the 7th Country Programme (2022-2023) which builds on and consolidates the gains from the previous country programme.

Ms. Rasheed underscored the importance of aligning their Country Programme to Sierra Leone’s MTNDP (2019-2023), and committing to reinvigorating partnership with government, private sector, civil society, academia and media so as to accelerate progress on the three transformative agenda.