Every year since 1999, the United Nations has continued to celebrate the youths all over the world. Eighteen years after, the youths have continued to gain increasing recognition as agents of change in the society – since they have very important roles to play in deterring and resolving conflicts, and are key constituents in ensuring the success of both peacekeeping and peace building efforts. Hence, their inclusion in the peace and security agenda of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development committed to fostering peaceful and inclusive societies and affirmed “Sustainable development cannot be realised without peace and security”. Goal 16 aims to ensure responsive, inclusive, participatory and representative decision-making at all levels. The World Programme of Action for Youth, which provides a policy framework and practical guidelines to improve the situation of young people, also encourages “promoting the active involvement of youth in maintaining peace and security”.
For the purpose of achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development agenda, it is considerable to adopt a conventional definition of youth; assess the concept of youth investment and how it can ensure the success of both peacekeeping and peace building; as well as suggest ways the incentives tailored towards youth investment can make meaningful impact on them.
According to Wikipedia, The terms youth, teenager, kid, and young person are interchanged, often meaning the same thing, but they are occasionally differentiated. Youth can be referred to as the time of life when one is young. This involves childhood, and the time of life which is neither childhood nor adulthood, but rather somewhere in between fourteen and twenty-one years of age.
The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child of 1989 defines a child as any human person who has not reached the age of eighteen years.
To bring home the definition, we shall adopt the definition of the African Youth Charter; that a youth is any human person who falls in the age bracket of fifteen and thirty-five. However, the task that lies before us should make us think in line with Robert Kennedy that, “the world demands the qualities of youth: not a time of life but a state of mind, a temper of the will, a quality of imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the life of ease”.
The concept of youth empowerment and youth investment are interchanged, often implying the same thing. On the contrary, youth empowerment is a form of political heart-buy of youths for continuity. Most African politicians and their governments have bastardized the concept and have used it to manoeuvre their immediate social environment. Many of them believe that empowerment mean to purchase and distribute either of, motorcycles, tricycles (popularly called “Keke” in Nigeria), wheelbarrows, hairdryers, Knapsack sprayers, and stipends in form of social transfer benefits, etc. In as much as this is a plus to the society, there are little or no evidence that the beneficiaries expressed any form of predominance of courage over timidity; developed a superior state of mind or have any quality imagination that can spur innovation to permanently lift them out of poverty. It is evident that many of the beneficiaries have no appetite for adventure as they are limited to what they know and do, and are hardly proud of their skills since they remain restless and agitated. They also develop high sense of entitlement and feel marginalized; believing that what they have received can only keep them surviving each moment and not living in each moment.
The concept of youth investment sees beyond tenure. It is a concept that seeks to improve young people’s outcomes through better funding opportunities, programmes and initiatives that build the capability and resilience of young people so they have the skills and confidence to engage positively in, and contribute to, their societies. These outcomes support increased educational achievement, greater employability, improved health and less state intervention. The economic and social landscape of the world is rapidly changing with the developments in technology affecting the way we think, live and work, the young people forming about 70% of the African population need to acquire the digital, entrepreneurial and enterprise skills to be participate and contribute to the social and economic growth of their societies.
This concept has three key strategies: leadership development, volunteering and mentoring. These can be achieved little or no stress but with the political will power to grow the economy and sustain peace and security.
The following key components of the strategies includes; maximising scarce resources through collaborating with corporate, non-governmental, and other government organization, improving data collection and analysis to enable funding based on knowledge of what works and for which group of young people, a clear mission statement and continuous appraisal of outcomes, and targeting investment to where it will have the most impact.
Therefore, if we intentionally adopt these strategies, guided by its component; and ensuring accountability, integrity, and inclusiveness we can build and shape a peaceful and secured Africa.
Ugbabe Adagboyi Damian
Twitter @ugbabeD