Youth Empowerment as Catalyst for Sustainable Development

Youth Empowerment as Catalyst for Sustainable Development

The priority for Africa must be the empowerment of its youths, ensuring the creation of jobs and economic opportunities for all, writes Dike Onwuamaeze

The Chairman of the United Bank for Africa (UBA) and Founder of the Tony Elumelu Foundation (TEF), Mr. Tony Elumelu, set the tone of discussion at the recently held UBA Africa Day Conversation 2021, when he stated boldly and clearly that the priority for Africa must be the empowerment of its youths and ensuring the creation of jobs and economic opportunities for them even during this very difficult times.

Elumelu stated that through his involvement with TEF, an African in leading philanthropy with the vision to empower African entrepreneurs from all African countries, he has seen how Africa’s young people, despite the COVID-19 challenges, have leveraged their talents, expertise and technology to create wealth and support the communities they lived in.

“We must, therefore, create an enabling environment for our young entrepreneurs to succeed to ensure that what these young ones have made should not be erased. We must empower them to create the jobs that would lift the continent to prosperity,” Elumelu said.
He noted that this informed the theme of the third UBA Africa conversation that centered on, “The Emergence of a New Africa: Africa to the World.”

The panelists lived up to their billing with the insights they brought to the conversion on the impact of COVID-19 pandemic disease on African economies and societies and how the youths should be empowered to lift the continent out of its chaotic challenges.
They also discussed the importance of investing in digital economy for the continent and measures that would enable the continent to reap the maximum benefits of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).

The members of the panel were the President of Rwanda, President Paul Kagame; Director General of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala; Director General of the World Health Organisation (WHO), Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and the Managing Director of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), Mr. Makhtar Sop Diop.
Okonjo-Iweala stated that African youths are the continent’s gold and no effort should be spared to mobilise them productively as the continent strived to recover from this pandemic.

She also posited that Africa’s economies required in the short term policies that would enable them to gain more fiscal stimulus through debt restructuring that would give them the breathing space to invest in health and other economic sectors, adding that this is how we are going to recover.

She noted that African leaders quest for new Special Drawing Rights (SDR) at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) might have a chance as the IMF has agreed to provide $650 billion where Africa would get $34 billion, which would be used to implement more fiscal stimulus that would give economies the ability to recover. Moreover, some liquidity should also go to the private sector.

However, the director general of the WTO stated that the vaccine inequality must be corrected to enable Africa and other poor regions of the world to recover sustainably from the devastating effects of COVID-19.
She stated that a study conducted by the IMF showed that by spending additional $50 billion to vaccinate 40 per cent of the world’s population by 2021 and another to 60 per cent in 2022 would reverse this vaccine inequality and the world could actually gain $9 trillion by 2025.
She also said Africa must find ways to revive the service sector, especially for countries that depended on tourism, logistics and aviation like Ethiopia.

But on the medium and long terms Africa must diversify its economies to wean itself from the vulnerable movements of commodities market due to fluctuation in the prices of minerals, oil and gas.
Okonjo-Iweala argued that African countries must ensure free movement of people, goods and services in order to enjoy maximum advantage of the AfCFTA.

She said: “I believe in it (AfCFTA) and I am proud that our presidents have done. But if we want AFCTA to work, we must make goods, services and people move to easily across borders. Lastly, we do not even have a choice if we want to change the tempo of growth in Africa economies, rely more on ourselves and export more. So, we have got to make this free trade area work. And the WTO is expectant and waiting to support the continent to make it work.”

She also enjoined African youths never to let anything stop their imagination and willingness to try things.
“Do not be a risk averse as many people are in life. It was a risk when I aspired to be the director general of the WTO. But I took the risk because this something I wanted to do. So, take a bit of risk to do something you are passionate about,” she said, adding that Africa needed to improve its digital infrastructure to drive ecommerce and enable SMEs to access market and benefit from the WTO’s scheme that is meant to help the SMEs to upgrade their products.

In his contribution during the conversation, President Kagame defined the new Africa as a continent that is confident in its ability to meet the needs of its people, adding that Africa relied on the resilience of its people to wade through the chaos it brought along.

“We are counting on our continent’s resilience to see us through this crisis. Fortunately, and also important, we are working together as a continent with our partners to build Africa’s vaccine manufacture capacity.
“But we cannot invest much from our budgets in our national health systems. Therefore, the private sector has a big role to play in this so that the next health crisis will not catch Africa unprepared again,” he said.

Kagame noted that Africa should be more concerned with what it should be doing to prevent the crises rocking the stability of the continent in many points from arising because the continent has witnessed more than a decade of crises of different kinds.

He urged African leaders in public and private sectors to invest in one another to be able to create a sustainable African continent.

He said: “The continued emergence and spread of these crises calls for more investment of our time and resources and the evolvement of the mindset to say that we need peace to develop. So, we must put in place good politics and invest in addressing the real causes of these problems.

“We need also to walk the talk and put a sense of urgency by being a little bit more serious in doing things rather than just talking because we have crises and poverty that we need to address in order to have opportunity for growth across the continent with the youths and women building the system and institutions that will help us to overcome our challenges.”

Kagame made it clear that Africa would not benefit from the AfCFTA without working together in peace, security, stability and doing things, “that will give us the results we all desired rather than turning things into academic exercise.”

He also said Africa should invest in digital infrastructure to leverage on its young people’s creativity and to connect its people to the AfCFTA. The continent, according to him, has tasted the benefits digital technology and would not need much preaching before doing the practical things about investments in terms investments.
He also agreed with Okonjo-Iweala’s emphasis on easier movement of people, goods and services across borders but pointed out that the big elephant in the room has always been lack of political will to make the AfCFTA to work as efficient as possible.

He said: “Leaders must make it work. It is all about the political will to make these movements realisible by putting in the forefront the kind of politics that will make them happen.”
Kagame also left the youths with some words of encouragement: “Young people must ask themselves individually what they want from life? And build themselves to have capacity to give to themselves and others. Others will never give you enough so do not except much from them.”

For Ghebreyesus, the impact of COVID-19 has been profound for lives, systems and economies within the continent even though Africa has not seen the same scale of devastation from the pandemic as witnessed in other regions of the world.

He observed that the poor and the vulnerable were hit the hardest and warned that Africa should not let down its guard since what that is happening in many parts of the world could also happen in the continent.
He also added that the volume of the vaccines available in Africa are nowhere near enough as 47 countries in the continent that have started vaccinating their citizens could only administer somewhere around 25 million doses, which is about 1.5 per cent of vaccines administered globally.

“This is very tragic. However, the WHO is working hard to bring about immediate solutions for equitable distributions of vaccine doses. But it is clear that Africa cannot rely solely on import of vaccines from the rest of the world.

“We must build capacity not only for COVID-19 but for other vaccines and medical products. The corporation of the public and private sectors will be essential in this endavour,” he said, adding that the IFC is working with the African Union (AU) to establish African Medicines Agency (AMA),” he added.

He pledged that the WHO would provide, “technical support to establish the agency and to build a strong regulatory institution for Africa. More than anything else, the pandemic has demonstrated that health is not a luxury item or simply an outcome for development. It is a human rights issue and a prerequisite for social and economic development.”

The director general of the WHO noted that candid discussion was crucial in resolving the problem of vaccine nationalism that has hindered poor countries from accessing vaccines.
He also said the world should agree on the importance of cooperation that would make the pandemic a common enemy. This corporation must start with sharing what is available so that the world could fight its common enemy everywhere.

“This is not charity and it is in the interest of the whole world, even the advanced countries because they are better protected when they can share rather than protecting their own only. So far the USA has announced 18 million doses to share likewise Switzerland and Norway. I hope this trend will continue and help us to address critical challenges we have now. We cannot choose competition and confrontation.

“The immediate solution is to manufacture what we need through voluntary licensing that AstraZeneca has started. This will include intellectual right wavers that USA and many countries are supporting. Rwanda has started taking practical steps for local production. And we need to speed up those initiatives to increase production in the medium and short term,” he said.

He also encouraged the youths to have the mindset to serve their communities and humanity. Ghebreyesus said: “Mindset is everything and key to any important achievement. And the mindset I always respect is serving your community with kindness and in good faith.”

According to Diop, the outbreak of COVID-19 on one hand presented Africa with a time of crises that called for resilience in the face of adversity and on the other hand with an opportunity to change the face of the continent to the extent that it would start creating jobs and growth by supporting a strong SMEs and startups that would employ the youths.

He said Africa could do this by taking advantage of the AfCFTA agreement to promote trade among its people.
“We need the development of continental value chain in Africa to evolve more transformation in our continent. First let us start with the pharmaceutical,” Diop said.

He also argued that Africa should encourage specialisation among its countries to create needed value chain and pursue trade financing that would promote intra-African trade wand enable the SMEs to create jobs.
The IFC boss told young Africans that people do not become successful just because they were exceptional. “I am not exceptional. Do not allow any person to set a limit for you as an individual. Never accept someone to limit your aspirations. Moreover, individual success has value if it is part of the communities’ success. And try to understand that you do not know a lot and be learning every day.”

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