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Africa
Day: Youth empowerment: Getting beyond the rhetoric and slogans
Youth Forum
May 24, 2011
As Africans
at home and abroad celebrate Africa Day this year, it is very important
to take cognizance of the year's celebrations' theme:
"Accelerating Youth Empowerment". Such a theme can never
be more befitting particularly at this moment in the history of
the continent, it is also refreshing to note that someone has finally
realized that not only are the African youths disempowered, but
that the rate of empowering them is dismal and therefore needs to
be accelerated.
The African
Union member states have signed many treaties that recognize the
importance of youth empowerment but little action has been done
to implement such agreements. The African Youth Charter of July
2006 recognizes the youths as Africa's greatest resource and
that through our active participation, Africans can surmount the
difficulties that lie ahead. It is worrying to note that with such
convictions, the same body has done little to involve the youths
The main reason
why very little has been done in terms of implementing the agreements
goes back to the marginalization and exclusion of the beneficiaries,
the youths, in coming up with such policies. Old men and women sit
down and decide what is good for us without asking us what we think.
The youths have declared time and again that anything for us without
us is against us but the time has come for us to claim what belongs
to us and not wait to be invited or have our goods delivered at
our doorstep.
Zimbabwe is
currently undergoing an empowerment and indigenization program that
aims at empowering the formerly disempowered groups. It is mind-boggling
to note how the drive, being spearheaded by the youth minister,
has suddenly excluded the youths from benefiting. The program is
clearly designed to further enrich a few who have the resources
to be involved in the program. The youths cannot be involved since
they are marginalized from the main society through inequalities
in income, wealth and voice. A youth-oriented program would have
involved the availing of a flexible loan facility that would ensure
the creation of newer enterprises and bring about economic development
and employment. It would also entail the awarding of major tenders
to locally-owned and youth-led entities so as to boost their operations,
and not taking over what is already existent.
In an effort
to accelerate the empowerment of the youth, we the government to
follow the dictates of the African Youth Charter, to which Zimbabwe
is a signatory which urges member states to:
- Guarantee
the participation of youth in parliament and other decision-making
bodies
- Ensure equal
access to young men and women to participate in decision-making
activities
- Give priority
to policies and programs including youth advocacy and peer-to-peer
programmes for marginalised youths to offer them the opportunity
and motivation to re-integrate into mainstream society
- Provide
access to information that will empower youths to become aware
of their rights and of opportunities to participate in decision-making
and civic life
- Develop macroeconomic
policies that focus on job creation particularly for youth
- Develop measures
to regulate the informal economy to prevent unfair labor practices
where the majority of youth work.
It is only after
the full implementation of such agreements that the youths of the
continent can become fully empowered. The Youth Forum, as a conduit
for promoting youth empowerment and participation, will not tire
in its endeavors to see a truly empowered youth.
Visit the Youth
Forum fact
sheet
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