Members of SYDA and dignitaries after the official launch of the summit
African Youth Entrepreneurship Summit, a forum created to raise youth entrepreneurship awareness and tackle unemployment and its menace in Africa, has been launched in Sunyani.
Madam Fati Bamba, Director of the National Youth Authority (NYA) responsible for the Bono, Bono East and Ahafo regions, officially launched the event on behalf of Mr. Pius Hadzide, the Chief Executive Officer.
The idea for establishing this summit, also called ‘YES-Africa’, was conceived and mooted by the Sunyani Youth Development Association (SYDA), a youth development focused group established in 2015 to seek skill competencies and capacities for vulnerable young boys and girls to improve their livelihoods through skill training.
Continental project
The YES-Africa, launched recently, is a continental development project that focuses on raising youth entrepreneurship awareness and top-notch engagement to help actualize concepts of many youths that have the potential to impact Africa’s development in areas that would see them evolve to make the needed impact globally.
The project focuses on bringing together African leaders, youth ministers, development partners, businesses, entrepreneurs many others to vividly discuss how the entire continent could factor and go by tailored entrepreneurship direction for the young ones in the areas of agriculture, sports, skills training, factories and education and youth empowerment aimed at creating employment opportunities for poverty eradication in Africa.
This summit, which would be climaxed in November this year, would be made up of workshops on entrepreneurship development, developing football entrepreneurs, coaching and mentorship sessions, integrity driven workshops, grand expo and other interactive sessions for networking.
The idea is to create room for a broader consultation and access to support for most youths who have interest to become great entrepreneurs to help lift the burdensome yoke of unemployment on the African continent.
Madam Fati Bamba reiterated the critical need for African governments and all key stakeholders to collaborate with the Association for the betterment of the youth across the continent in the areas of entrepreneurship. She said the youth have the highest population in Africa and their success would inure to the benefit of the entire continent.
“African governments therefore have a key role to play in the summit, looking at its holistic benefits because entrepreneurship could employ millions of youths to enable them contribute meaningfully toward the development of their respective countries, communities and the continent at large,” she stressed.
Partnerships
Mad. Bamba called on the Ghana Enterprises Agency, Youth in Community development Secretariat, Youth Employment Agency and the Nation Builders Corp (NABCO) Secretariat to come on board as well as all youth leaders across Africa, Non-Governmental Organizations, Entrepreneurs, development partners and investors to support this laudable initiative.
Earlier in his welcome address, Mr. Atta Akoto Senior, President of the Sunyani Youth Development Association, said “we strongly believe that the African Youth is capable if given the right support”.
“SYDA’s YES-Africa evolved out of our thoughts of findings ways of addressing the problems that inflict our continent at the community level and could be made a reality with the collaboration and support of all as we dare to be ambitious in finding ways of raising above the usual rhetoric of crying out loud our woes as a continent on issues such as youth unemployment, poverty, threatening famine and many more,” he said.
Mr. Akoto Senior explained SYDA`s core operational areas as “Youth Development Advocacy, Community Development Advocacy and Youth Empowerment through Skill Training and Educational Empowerment” and the YES-Africa project factors of all such cardinal operational areas.
On behalf of the Sunyani Traditional Council, Nana Kusi Boadum, also a Board Member of the Association, assured the Traditional Council`s full support for SYDA and the YES-African summit.
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