The U.N. adopted its Sustainable Development Goals on Friday, building on the Millennium Development Goals, launched in 2000. This offers a moment to reflect on the successes of that 2000 agenda, but also to look forward, learning lessons and working to ensure that this new agenda has the highest possible chance of success.

As an African, I view these ambitious new targets, which include goals to end poverty and inequality and protect the environment, as a precious opportunity to accelerate the development trajectory of Africa, not least by more effectively leveraging the private sector as an agent to generate and advance economic and social wealth.

Tapping into Africans’ entrepreneurial genius to address economic and social challenges is also critical to the achievement of these goals.

I often write about Africa from the perspective of business, having spent my entire career working as a banker, investor and entrepreneur across the continent. But I also write as a father whose children will be among those who inherit our planet. If these goals are achieved, we will leave them a better world than the one we inherited from our parents.