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Let’s Empower ECOWAS Youth — President Yayi |
| The President of Benin, Dr Yayi Boni, has stressed the need for a concerted efforts from Africa in giving attention to all facets of development affecting the youth — sports, health, economics and education — to help them make a meaningful contribution to the new African development. |
Dr Yayi believes that offering the youth of Africa new opportunities to flourish and realise their full potential is the only way to have a pragmatic solution to the numerous problems facing the youth of today and which is hindering an accelerated development of the continent.
Addressing an ECOWAS sub-regional meeting of Ministers of Youth and Sports in Cotonou last Friday, President Yayi whose speech was read on his behalf by Benin’s Minister of Defence, Mr Issifou Kogui Nígouro, said the high rate of unemployment among African youth was leading them astray into a lot of vices such as armed robbery, drug abuse and several other social vices, thereby affecting every aspect of meaningful development in the sub-region.
If the problem of the youth was not solved prudently and pragmatically, then the programme of development would remain a mirage, Dr Yayi observed.
He told the Ministers: “The youth of Africa in general and the ECOWAS sub-region in particular form an essential resource and they could be effective collaborators in the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
They can, however, not play their roles well if they are not adequately prepared, and it behoves us as present leaders to ensure that they are well prepared to help them contribute their bit to our individual and collective developmental aspirations for the continent.”
The five-day meeting of the ECOWAS Youth and Sports Ministers in Cotonou was to discuss the best ways to revive and promote sports within the sub-region, as well as harmonise youth development programmes at the sub-regional level.
Thirteen member countries including hosts, Benin, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Ghana, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Senegal and Togo were represented by their Youth and Sports Ministers for the two-day Ministers Conference which was preceded by a Meeting of Experts to formulate a working document for the Ministers.
Ghana’s delegation was led by the Deputy Minister of Education, Science and Sports O.B. Amoah (for sports) and the Deputy Minister of Manpower, Youth and Employment, Hon. Ken-Wuud Nuworsu (for youth).
Mrs Adrienne Diop, the ECOWAS Commissioner for Gender and Human Development who represented the President of the ECOWAS Commission, Dr Mohammed Ibn Chambas, also stressed the need to provide the youth with a platform to express their talent in promoting sports and culture.
She said the youth formed the majority of the population in ECOWAS and advocated programmes that would prepare them for adulthood and make them more responsible and responsive to building a sub-region that is competitive economically, vibrant socially, as well as effectively participate in the integration process of ECOWAS.
She said in view of the new dynamics in development issues, the sub-regional body was now shifting from being that of states to be more people-centred to build upon the enormous human resource and give hope to the youth in the sub-region.
She pledged ECOWAS’ commitment to promoting gender issues, sports and economic development, and as a first step, an ECOWAS Youth and Sports Development Centre has been opened in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, while a programme meant to provide an economic empowerment to the youth has also begun at the Songhai Centre in Porto Novo near Cotonou.
Five Ghanaians, four males and a female, selected through the National Youth and Employment Programme, are currently undergoing a month’s exercise at the centre, training in agro-based practical programmes.
The Ghanaians are undergoing the training through an ECOWAS sponsorship under the sub-regional body’s new training programme.
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