Speakers at this year's African Youth and Governance Conference have urged youth on the continent to be proactive and start engaging in entrprenuership programmes, instead of complaining about problems found on their continent.
Professor N'Dri Therese Assie-Lumumba, a lecturer at Cornel University and a board member of Youth Bridge Foundation, organisers of the conference who said this at a round table discussion, urged African youth not to give themselves out as slaves in this modern day slavery.
She observed that, "even though slave trade has been abolished long ago, our attitude still shows that we are still in slavery because the youth do not take major decisions by themselves but are influenced by the western world".
"Until the youth of Africa start shunning away from everything western and begin advancing various development agenda by being the change agents, African will continue to mark time and lag behind in our development quest," She added.
The 11th edition of African Youth and Governance Conference has brought together over 80 delegates from 44 countries in Africa and the diaspora. Among the participants are MPs from Zambia and Kenya as well as a minister from Canada.
Issues on Governance, Environment, Gender among others are being discussed at the convergence.
His Excellency Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, former President of Nigeria is scheduled to give the keynote address at the conference.
Source: Peacefmonline.com
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Why are you not teaching in Makerere University but Cornell? These people when they have outlived their usefulness pretend to be the King Solomons of our time with solutions to every problem! How did the youth find ourselves looking to Europe and the Americas for refuge? The clueless leaders who are your contemporaries have massively failed us and they have sold our dignity and self-worth! You wonder the kind of contracts they sign for the people and it leaves you very furious! The thinking is after all they don't have much time on Earth to suffer the inevitable consequences of those bad contracts! The amount of money we loose to corruption, judgement debt and bad contracts is more than the loans we contract from other well-managed economies! Why is that the case?
Please, blame the adults, especially, the educated ones found at every level of national development in Africa. Do you believe that most of our educated folk send their pregnant wives to Europe and the USA to give birth for their children to become citizens of those countries...I think this is sad, because such children grow up as non-Africans but as second rate citizens. Second rate citizens are more or less 'slaves' in those countries. This is the new trend in the slavery system you are talking about.
coz the adults are clearly not in synch with youth matters