Rawlings commends Clinton for global initiative

Former President Jerry Rawlings

The former President, Flt. Lt. Jerry John Rawlings, has commended the previous US President, Mr Bill Clinton for his tremendous impact on international development.

Flt. Lt. Rawlings made the commendation at a meeting with Mr Clinton in New York, where he was invited by his counterpart as a member of the 5th Meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative.

A document on the meeting released to the Ghana News Agency, from New York at the weekend said, the initiative was an international grouping of eminent political, business and civil society personalities. The former president said Mr Clinton had expressed grave concern about the quality of leadership in parts of Africa and called on like-minded people to endeavour to expose the rot within African leadership.

President Rawlings said: "You have converted your presidency into an engineer, architect and co-ordinator of some of the most educational brains and wealthy but charitable organisations, in a bid to make the world a more humane place and for people to live in a sustainable way." The former American President said he was impressed with the work Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings; Ghana's former First Lady, had done for women empowerment and development in Africa and invited her to be part of the panel on women issues during the 6th meeting of the Initiative next year.

This year more than 60 former and current heads of state participated in the meeting, which addressed Education, Energy and Climate Change, Global Health, and Economic Empowerment. The four New Action Areas were: Harnessing Innovation for Development, Strengthening Infrastructure, Building Human Capital, and Financing an Equitable Future.

The Initiative received more than $8 billion in pledges at the summit to solve some of the world's most pressing problems such as poverty and climate change.

Politicians like US President, Barack Obama and leaders of Argentina and Rwanda attended the summit, which also attracted the Managing Director of the International Monetary and celebrities like Bono, Brad Pitt and Quincy Jones.

The new commitments of the initiative include plans to increase female employment in Africa, expand micro-insurance and distribute vaccines that would prevent cervical cancer.

Chief Executives from Exxon Mobil Corp, Dow Chemical, Wal-Mart Stores Inc, Coca-Cola Co, Goldman Sachs Group Incorporated and Kraft Foods helped the 2009 summit see more participation from companies than the previous year.

This year's event was also more interactive, with more than 9,000 people posting comments on CGI's Facebook page and the event averaging about 80 Twitter posts an hour throughout the week.