YE4L marks African youth day in Tamale

The Youth Empowerment For Life (YE4L) has organised a forum in Tamale to mark African youth day celebrated on the first of November each year.

The forum was to promote the recognition of the youth as key agents of social change and economic development, and to direct them to channel their energies towards achieving sustainable development in their communities.

This year's celebration dubbed "Creating space for youth participation in employment and decision making" brought together about 150 youth from 10 districts within the Northern, Savannah and North East regions.

The forum was graced by about 50 other key stakeholders from civil society as well as government agencies in the Northern region.

Some of the dignitaries included Mr Iddrisu Musah, the Metropolitan Chief Executive of Tamale and Alhaji Majeed Harun, Chief Executive Officer of the Northern Development Authority.

The youth group after the forum presented a communique to Mr Salifu Saeed, the Northern Regional Minister, through the Tamale Mayor.

The youth through the communique raised issues about how the lack of room for innovation and monetization of political space continuously denied them, opportunities to be represented in effective decision making.

They requested that vocational, technical training and youth entrepreneurship should be given the needed attention to empower the youth economically as well provide them with startup capitals for greater impact.

Mr Salifu Saeed in a speech read on his behalf, said it would be difficult for Ghana to achieve sustained development if the youth were left out of the decision making processes, and indicated that they constituted half of the nation's population and therefore they needed to be mentored and given adequate room to function.

He attributed low participation of the youth in decision making to inadequate information for participation and personal interest and charged them to avail themselves for opportunities in development.

He charged Chief Executive Officers across the region to consider designing programmes that would help tackle youth unemployment in the area.