Sunyani, June 03, GNA – An African Youth Entrepreneurship Summit to raise youth entrepreneurship awareness and tackle unemployment and its associated challenges in Africa has been launched in Sunyani.
The summit, dubbed, ’YES-Africa’ to be held in November this year in Sunyani was conceived by the Sunyani Youth Development Association (SYDA), a youth development-focused group established in 2015 to seek skill competencies and capacities for vulnerable young boys and girls to improve their livelihoods through skill training.
The YES-Africa is a continental development project that focuses on raising youth entrepreneurship awareness and top-notch engagement to help actualize concepts of many youths that have the potential to impact Africa’s development in areas that would see them evolve to make the needed impact globally.
The project focuses on bringing together African leaders, youth ministers, development partners, businesses, entrepreneurs and many others to vividly discuss how the entire continent could factor and go by tailored-entrepreneurship direction for the young ones in the areas of agriculture, sports, skills training, factories and education and youth empowerment that aimed at employment opportunities for poverty eradication in Africa.
The summit would include workshops on entrepreneurship development, developing football entrepreneurs, coaching and mentoring sessions, integrity-driven workshops, a grand expo and other interactive sessions for connections and link creation.
The idea is to create room for broader consultation and access to support for most youths who have the interest to become great entrepreneurs to help lift the burdensome yoke of unemployment on the African continent.
Madam Fati Bamba, the Bono, Bono East and Ahafo Regions Director of the National Youth Authority (NYA) officially launched the event on behalf of Mr Pius Hadzide, the Chief Executive Officer of NYA.
Madam Bamba reiterated the critical need for African governments and all key stakeholders to collaborate with the Association for the betterment of the youth across the continent in the areas of entrepreneurship, saying, the youth have the highest population in Africa and their success was going to be the success of the entire continent.
African governments, therefore, have a key role to play in the summit, looking at its holistic benefits because entrepreneurship could employ millions of youths to enable them to contribute meaningfully toward the development of their respective countries, communities, and the continent at large, she stressed.
Madam Bamba called on the Ghana Enterprises Agency, Youth in Community Development Secretariat, Youth Employment Agency, and the Nation Builders Corp (NABCO) Secretariat, as well as youth leaders across Africa, non-governmental organizations, entrepreneurs, investors, and development partners, to come on board to support “this laudable initiative.”
Earlier Mr Atta Akoto Senior, the President of the Association said, “We strongly believe that the African Youth is capable of achieving a lot if given the right support.”
“The SYDA’s YES-Africa evolved out of our thoughts of findings ways of addressing the problems that inflict our continent at the community level and could be made a reality with the collaboration and support of all, as we dare to be ambitious in finding ways of rising above the usual rhetoric of crying out loud our woes as a continent on issues such as youth unemployment, poverty, threatening famine and many more,” he said.
Mr Akoto Snr. explained SYDA`s core operational areas were ”Youth Development Advocacy, Community Development Advocacy and Youth Empowerment through Skill Training and Educational Empowerment”, saying the YES-Africa project had factored them as cardinal operational areas.
On behalf of the Sunyani Traditional Council, Nana Kusi Boadum, also a Board Member of the Association assured the Traditional Council`s full support for SYDA and the YES-African summit.
Mr John Ansu Kumi, the Sunyani Municipal Chief Executive (MCE) in an interview with the GNA, lauded the initiative, saying, considering the huge number of graduates produced by the tertiary institutions in Ghana and across Africa every year, government policies and interventions alone could not absorb them all for employment.
He, therefore, expressed optimism that, “an event of such nature is a laudable idea that would equip the individuals cognitively for jobs creation”.
GNA