The Global Development Initiative (GDI) has played a key role over the past five years in revitalizing the global development agenda and promoting South-South cooperation, a Pakistani envoy has said.
The initiative was proposed at an important time, bringing development back to the mainstream global agenda, which is an important contribution, Tahir Andrabi, Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Office at Geneva, said in an interview with Xinhua.
Over the past five years, the GDI has implemented more than 1,800 “small and beautiful” projects in more than 120 countries, mobilizing over 23 billion U.S. dollars, he said.
Andrabi stressed that the GDI complements the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) while responding to the reality that the world still needs greater focus on development.
The latest UN data show that only 36 percent of the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) targets with available trend data are on track or making moderate progress, and 15 percent have even regressed below their 2015 baselines.
“The world, particularly developing countries, is falling behind in meeting the needs of its people and the SDG targets. The GDI is an important initiative to fill these gaps,” he said.
On China-Pakistan cooperation, Andrabi perceived the GDI as an important platform for charting the future trajectory of development and economic cooperation between the two countries.
“We believe that the GDI, together with the BRI and its flagship project CPEC (the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor) 2.0, will continue to further diversify avenues of development cooperation between Pakistan and China in the context of CPEC, and between China and the larger developing world in the context of the BRI,” he said.
Andrabi expressed hope for deepening cooperation in high-tech fields such as AI, quantum computing and robotics, citing the immense opportunities in these areas.
“The GDI provides an opportunity to make these technologies available to developing countries, thereby harnessing the potential of these technologies to deliver direct benefits and generate employment,” he said.
Andrabi also mentioned the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO) established in Shanghai this year, with Pakistan among its founding members.
“We hope that WAICO, together with the GDI and the efforts of the Chinese government, will promote complementarities and work together to bring modern technology benefits to developing countries,” he said.
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