Accra, July 13, GNA – Ms Chido Mpemba, the African Union (AU) Chairperson Youth Envoy, has called on the youth in Ghana and across the continent to engage in a healthy collaboration and reduce internal competitions to devise solutions to Africa’s problems.
African youth, she said, was confronted with many challenges ranging from unemployment to lack of access to public health, meanwhile they had a lot of potential that could be relied upon to turns things around on the continent in the quest to achieving the AU Agenda 2063.
She made the call when the AU, AU Office of the Youth Envoy and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) organised a town hall meeting with young people in Accra on the theme: “Young People are the Future, Hear Their Voices.”
The town hall meeting kicked-off a 60-day tour and engagement programme organised for the Youth Envoy to engage youth across nine African countries over their challenges and lay their recommendations through advocacy for policy considerations.
Ms Mpemba said the recommendations from engagements with the youth would also be given to policy makers in the various countries for political commitments and promotion of best practices to improve the economic and social lives of the youth.
Mr Pius Enam Hadzide, Chief Executive Officer (CEO), National Youth Authority (NYA), speaking about promoting youth welfare, said it was important to improve the quality of training given to the youth in tertiary institutions to relate with the needs and aspirations of the job market.
“The Ghanaian young person needs to be made globally competitive, hence it is exciting that government is beginning a robust review of the educational paradigm focusing heavily on Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) and psychomotor skills.
“Development history has shown that manufacturing in many of the developed countries was as a result of TVET, which is the long-term solution,” he said.
Mr Hadzide said the short-term solution was, however, supposed to be interventions to deal with the large numbers that were already in school.
“We must remove the barriers to young people becoming entrepreneurs such as the current finance crisis, fuel crisis and food crisis,” he added.
The NYA CEO said the finance crisis required that government sought a bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for balance of payment.
“I hope that both IMF and Government of Ghana will be guided so that the term sheets will enhance entrepreneurial spirits in the hands of young people to deal with the problem of unemployment in a sustainable and realistic manner.
“We are also cautiously optimistic that the term sheet will not be to frustrate the job creation move for the youth such as a freeze on recruitment into the public sector,” Mr Hadzide added.
GNA