By Gift Briton
Member countries of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) have adopted a development and empowerment policy framework on engaging the youth meaningfully towards socioeconomic and political development.
Towards the tail end of an IGAD ministerial meeting held in Nairobi on July 27, representatives from Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Uganda, Djibouti and Eritrea signed the youth policy agreement to guide on the design and implementation of effective and meaningful youth engagement strategies.
Although six in ten people across the IGAD region are youth, they are mostly not included in most economic and development issues. This policy, therefore, aims to contribute to the attainment of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by ensuring that youth are significantly engaged in economic, social, cultural and political life.
“If you are not including the youth then meaningful transformation cannot happen. So countries should develop and implement policies and provide space for meaningful engagement of the youth,” Dr. Kebede Tsegaye, IGAD’s Coordinator for Education, science, technology and innovation, noted in an interview with Science Africa.
The policy covers a wide range of social, economic and environmental issues that affect the youth including poverty, climate action, unemployment, education and food insecurity among others.
“This policy will facilitate and provide areas of action on the inclusion of the youth in economic development and capacity to monitor and evaluate the progress that we have achieved. We have to put the youth at the center in implementing this policy instrument and let them drive and be at the forefront in day-to-day activities,” Dr. Tsegaye observed.
“It is the youth who are expected to play an active in achieving regional integration. The policy will act as a template for countries who are yet to develop youth policy and help to fasten effective implementation.”
He added that IGAD will continue to organize activities to facilitate meaningful youth engagement and provide platforms for lessons learning, monitoring and evaluation of what has been achieved and what has remained and what should be done to realize the policy.
For countries that already have nationwide youth engagement policies, Dr. Tsegaye advised that they need to put those policies into action while countries without youth policies are urged to adopt the IGAD youth policy and implement it.
“All partners should be able to contribute to the implementation of this policy and identify priority areas by respective national governments. The governments cannot achieve these recommendations alone, there is a need for partnership and collaboration. They have to take each and every component of the priority areas seriously and integrate them into different divisions and make them an annual achievement benchmarking,” he added.
