Mr. Kojo Asante of the
Centre for Democratic Development (CDD), on Thursday accused African governments of doing little to address the problem of youth marginalization from mainstream development.
He said despite the increasing youth population growth, successive governments in Africa had continuously sidelined the youth and witnessed marginal increase in the number of young people in the legislature and the active involvement in national governance.
Mr Asante made this observation at the launch of the African Youth Governance Conference (AYGC) which is slated for August 12 to 14, 2009. It would help concretize and initiate steps to institutionalize African Youth engagement and participation in governance.
The conference to be hosted by Ghana under the theme; "Sustainability: Our Challenge our Future," for over a hundred delegates from all African countries, is a follow-up to the African- wide Youth and Governance conference which was held in 2008.
Mr Asante cited the problems of unemployment, limited opportunities for education, participation in constructive political and development processes, saying while Ghana's youth represented an enormous resource they should be considered as important agents of social and economic transformation.
He said based on the importance of the role of the youth in development, the Executive Council of the Assembly of Heads of States and Governments of the African Union at a meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, declared the years 2009 to 2019 as the decade of youth development in Africa.
He said the conference was expected to engage national government and policy makers in the
development of youth-focused policies and getting at least 20 governments to commit themselves to ratify
the African Youth Charter by 2010.
Mr. Asante said delegates were expected to develop Country-specific action plans and further strategise for Africa Brain Gain.
"The conference would form the basis for an initiated process for African youth to appreciate the value of issue-based voting patterns across the continent and form a network of professional youth of African origin in the Diaspora," he said.
Mr. Haruna Iddrisu, Minister of Communications (MoC), in a speech read for him by Mr Emmanuel Ofori, Assistant Director for Policy Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation( MoC) said the youth should not be seen as a burden on society, but rather partners in development.
He said government was committed towards the mobilization of resources to facilitate youth training and create over 10,000 jobs for the youth in Ghana.
The Minister challenged the youth to be dedicated and work positively towards Ghana's vision of attaining a middle income status by 2020.
A website: WWW.aygconference.org was launched by Mr Jean-Pierre Gbikpi-Benissan, Ambassador of the Republic of Togo and Dean of the Diplomatic Corp to allow the public attain information about the conference and other issues concerning the youth in Africa.