This blog was written by Nnodim, Macduff Chimazu (Comrade), a Nigeria ONE Champion.
Fellow ONE Campaign members and I commemorated this year’s International Youth Day amongst over 3000 young Nigerian graduates at the National Youth Service Corps Orientation Camp located in Dakingari, Kebbi State, North-West Nigeria. Annually, 12th August is a day set aside by the United Nations to commemorate the International Youth Day; a celebration of young people across the globe, highlighting their significant contributions to the social and economic development of the various communities they belong to. For 2017, the International Youth Day was themed Youth Building Peace.
While speaking to young people like myself at this gathering, I could not help but make out ubiquitous looks of uncertainty etched on their faces for what the future holds, in terms of economic security, social acceptance and other parameters for measuring human prosperity. There is no gainsaying the fact that this uncertainty is triggered by what seems to be a failed system; high unemployment rates, frustration at the government and elected representatives, poor infrastructure and limited access to opportunities for an improved standard of living, a story that is used to describe almost all of Sub-Saharan Africa. This has played a huge part in the massive exodus from our rural communities in the sub-region from Lagos to Johannesburg, Accra to Nairobi and Kampala to Lusaka in search of greener pastures.
For Africa to remain relevant to the United Nation’s agenda of building peace through the youth, the region must invest significantly in education, empowerment and employment. When young people are uneducated and unemployed, they resort to prostitution, crime, social unrest and other vices, as a means of keeping their heads above the water. Needless to say, young and idle individuals are the main actors in the move of social unrest and insurgency in Africa, from Niger Delta Militants and Boko Haram in Nigeria to Somalia’s Al-Shabaab.
The threatening part of this demographic statistic in the region is that it hits girls and women the most, which makes it sexist (of course #PovertyisSexist).
Comrade Macduff with the National Youth Service Corps Orientation Camp in in Dakingari, Kebbi State.
According to ONE Campaign’s #GirlsCount, 130 million girls around the world are being denied an education, and a whopping 51 million of them are right here in Africa. When we educate young girls from a poor community, it can dramatically improve their health, wealth, and potentials. They are less likely to become child brides, contract diseases like HIV, or die young. More importantly, they could help lift their families and entire country out of poverty. In fact, girl child rights activist, 20 year-old Malala Yousafzai had to call for a state of emergency in the education sector in the Nigeria on her recent visit to Nigeria as part of her Girl’s Education Campaign.
If young people are provided with relevant and sufficient education, training and jobs, then the growth in their numbers could be highly beneficial for development. Unemployment among youth impedes social and economic development, now and in the future, as the growing number of youth will pose a challenge to the achievement of sustainable development, and could prove socially or politically destabilising as well.
Irrespective of the current and envisaged challenges of young people’s demogragh in Africa, there is a glimmer of hope. Africa’s growing youth population comes with high energy, creativity and talents, which are also the key to future prosperity. It now depends on whether African governments can grab the unemployment bull by the horns by investing in Education, Employment and Empowerment and turn the table around, making Africa the global youth hub for entrepreneurship and economic prosperity.
I am optimistic that Africa, combining the experience of the older generation with the enthusiasm, dynamism and creative energy of the young can ascend out of the dire straits it currently is in and kick-start the journey towards real, sustainable development.
Youth are full of life and strong, they have the right energy needed to carry the African continent on their shoulders and run the race of globalisation along the pathways of regional development and economic growth, only if African leaders can seize the moment and harness the demographic dividend of young people in the region.
Add your name and tell African leaders to act now.
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