Stakeholders who gathered at the recently concluded Social Media Week in Lagos are of the opinion that social media could be used as a tool to achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
The SDGs are also known as “Transforming our World: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” or 2030 Agenda was agreed upon by 193 countries in September 2015 at the United Nations.
According to Runcie Chidebe, Founder, Project Pinkblue Foundation, effective deployment of social media will serve as a tool to help fasten the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Chidebe who spoke “Social Media as a Tool to Achieve SDGs by 2030″, at the 6th edition of the Social Media Week expressed confidence in using social media to achieve the goal signed by many countries under the auspices of UN. He advised that one should know his target audience to be able to use social media well. Adding that through the social media, SDGs, which is the achievement of gender equality and empowerment of women and girls, has received a reasonable attention.
”Sometime in August 2017, we organized a programme and realized that there was no single radiotherapy machine in Nigeria except one privately-owned.
“We saw the need to go to government agencies but unfortunately did not succeed, until we decided to tweet the issue.
“I started tweeting with an article I wrote and tagged “Cancer patients paying with blood in Nigeria”.
“‘It got so much re-tweet that a few days after, the minister of health attended our event.
” The first thing he did even before his address was to respond to our tweet, saying that it was through such tweets that many issues could be addressed in Nigeria, ” he added.
Speaking also, Adepeju Jaiyeoba, Founder Brown Button Foundation, remarked that social media could change the narrative of Nigeria.
She explained the efficiency of social media as ‘using the ordinary to achieve the extraordinary’.
”It opens the country to the world,” she said.
