Youth Forum on African Youth Day

The Youth Forum will on Sunday the 1st of November join other progressive forces around the country and the African continent in commemorating the African Youth Day. This year’s theme for the day is ‘African Youth Promote African Positive Values’. The ten years from 2009 – 2018 have been declared the African Youth Decade.

The day comes at a time when the majority of youth in Zimbabwe are in a quandary over a host of issues that have hampered their positive development over the last decade and beyond. The Youth Forum has identified the lack of a conducive policy framework for youth participation and empowerment as the biggest threat to the positive development of young people in Zimbabwe.

While the government of Zimbabwe has made a commendable move in the ratification of the African Youth Charter in March 2009 and its coming into effect on August 8 2009, very little has been done thereafter to put the youth in light of such positive developments. Thus with a very good policy document in the form of the African Youth Charter, the youth continue to find themselves in the doldrums of poverty and hunger, they continue to be unemployed and continue to be sidelined in the decision making and policy dialogue realms.

As we commemorate this very important day for youth on the African continent, the Youth Forum continues to call on the government of Zimbabwe to seriously consider empowering its youth so that they are able to develop into mature and responsible adults who will be able to eventually lead their communities and the country. The Youth Forum is dismayed by the tokenistic nature in which youth are being hoodwinked to participate in decision making from a blinkered perspective.

This goes in as far as the Zimbabwe Youth Council (ZYC) is concerned. The ZYC continues to be patronized as an appendage of the parent Ministry of Youth Development, Indigenization and Empowerment. It is a wonder why we still have appointees on the ZYC Board who are appointed by non-youth players. Whose interests are these appointees there to serve? This is severely undermining the independence of youth in as far as decision making is concerned.

Recently the Minister of Youth has been making a lot of noise over some purported loans that the ministry is availing for youth through various financial institutions. We wish to remind the minister that very few if any youth have accessed these loans because of the prohibitive collateral requirements. It is really a wonder how the minister can expect youth in their current poverty state to produce the punitive collateral to access these loans which are being awarded on partisan lines. Many youth have reported that one has to know the Minister personally to access the loans. Thus real empowerment remains only in name and a far cry for many youth of Zimbabwe.

The Youth Forum takes this opportunity to stress that only genuine participation and empowerment of youth is the panacea to positive development of young people. As long as the government and political parties continue to use and abuse youth as proponents of violence, young people can never holistically promote positive African values and the African continent will never develop to its full potential. We call upon the government to ensure that they stand as guarantors of financial loans for young people so that young people can be rescued from the double scourge of poverty and unemployment.

Information and Publicity Department