In my Foreword to the Vision 2020 (1998), I did challenge managers of various
sectors of our national economy to come up with sound policies, strategies and
programs that can practically support the realization of our collective aspiration to
build a prosperous nation, a nation whose economy is technologically driven and one
that would have attained a middle income status by the year 2020.
This challenge was more recently echoed in the Poverty Reduction Strategy (2002), which
forms a centre pin of my Government’s development agenda, where both public and
private sector agencies are invited to support the Vision 2020 by developing and
implementing „pro-poor projects‟. The need to urgently respond to these calls is
underscored by our recognition that poverty, which is rampant in the country with
65% of the people living on less than a Dollar a day, is an unacceptable condition for
a people living in the 21st Century