The Africa Youth Day Celebration
On the occasion of the African Youth Charter adoption in the Executive Council Decision of the Banjul Summit 2006 (DOC.EX.CL./292 (IX) the 1st of November was proclaimed and instituted as ‘The Africa Youth Day.’
Africa Youth Day is a day set aside every year to promote the increased recognition of youth as key agents for social change, economic growth and sustainable development in all areas of African Society. It is an occasion to celebrate the youth on the continent, opportunity to contribute and channel youth motivation, energy and creativity towards political, social and economic renewal.
The purpose of this event is also, to contribute and channel the youth voices, energy and idealism to reinforce the efforts towards the achievement of sustainable development in Africa.
This year, the Africa youth day was celebrated under the theme ‘’Promoting Youth Mainstreaming as A Catalyst towards Harnessing the Demographic Devaluation’’ primarily promoted by The Greens, Eddy Hope Foundation, NWADO and YG in Bamenda.
On that faithful Tuesday, youths of all works of life, alongside some university students made their way into the premises of NECLA HOTEL at 1:30pm during which they were given the program that contained 11 activities, their duration as well as the various speakers for each activity.
The first Item had to do with an opening prayer followed by self introduction. An interesting item on the program was the intellectual debate based on the topic ’’ The Increasing Youthful Population in Africa Is an Asset to the Continents Economic Development’’ this intellectual debate had a lot of pros and cons but it ended up with those for carrying the day with 15 points /20 against 14.95/20 for those against.
Another eye-catching activity was the keynote within which the speaker encourage the youths to give a red card to Robert Mugabe saying ‘’the only threat to Africa is low battery’’ this coincided with the slogan on the program saying together let’s build ‘’the Africa we want. ’’
Furthermore on the program was a round table discussion which was a forum for challenges and solutions’ patterning to the youths to be voiced under the umbrella of; youth’s employment and entrepreneurship, education system amongst others. With respect to youths employment and entrepreneurship, problems such as; creative skill, mindset, pride and innovation were raised meanwhile solutions to empower the education system were proposed like a call for more internship or job training to blend theory and field work. Discussions on the round table were so lengthy and were recommended to continue online. Nevertheless, youths were encourage to have this saying in mind ‘’ youths are leaders of today to make better leaders of tomorrow’’
This memorable day ended at 5:00pm with some group pictures and networking.