My Turn

Consider the youth

The adage ‘no man is an island’ stands true even to countries.  Malawi is party to various global, continental and regional bodies such as the United Nations (UN), African Union (AU) and the Southern Africa Development Community (Sadc). These bodies have different mandates, however, that is not the subject of this write-up.

Of specific interest today is the conventions, declarations charters and protocols that member states of these bodies sign legally known as ratification. Though known by different names such as protocols, conventions or charters, the common dictionary meaning of all these words synonymously suggest to something like an agreement or a promise. I choose to call them promises in this article.

Malawi ratified a good number of the promises both at Sadc as well as the AU level in different sectors like human rights, the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights; in health, the Abuja call for Accelerated Action Towards Universal Access to HIV and Aids, tuberculosis and malaria by 2010; in child development, the African Charter on the rights and welfare of the child and in youth development, the African Youth Charter, just to mention a few.

Currently, there are several challenges in different sectors in Malawi, but it is the sorry state of youth development that has ignited my motivation on this subject.

Demographic indicators in the country’s population largely point to the fact that Malawi is a youthful population. The National Youth Policy defines the youth as all persons from age 10 to 35 years. The youth profile in Malawi indicates that out of the country’s projected population of 16 million, over 50 percent are aged 10 to 35 years. Although youth constitute a significant proportion of the population, they lack basic opportunities that would enable them develop to their full potential, according to the National youth Policy 2013. Common problems affecting the youth include high illiteracy rate, unemployment, under-employment, a high population growth rate, poverty, HIV and Aids pandemic and exploitation by politicians.

But what promises does government hold for the youth of Malawi? By being a member of the AU generally and by ratifying the African Youth Charter on August 13 2010 specifically, Malawi government commits to develop a comprehensive national youth policy to empower the youth to deal with the social, cultural, economic and political challenges they meet in their everyday lives after extensive consultation with the youth and other important stakeholders. Malawi is not off track on this one. In August 2013, government launched the comprehensive National Youth Policy (NYP) in style, the policy was indeed a product of wide consultations.

Two years have passed now since the launch of the comprehensive national youth policy, but youth unemployment is still on the rise, access to quality health care, access to quality education and access to soft loans remains a far-fetched dream especially for the majority of the youth in the rural areas. Mysterious fires burning merchandise have also greatly affected the youth.The famous phrase “we do not eat policies” is so common in a number of youth forums. The youth expect results, period.

The youth empowerment agenda, good as it may sound, is heavily impaired by underfunding to the Ministry of Youth and to the National Youth Council which are implementing agencies.

Monitoring of the policy is another scary bottleneck hindering progress. The Youth and Sports Management System (Yosmis) that was to be developed as a tool to monitor and evaluate impact of the policy is not yet developed two years down the line. A million dollar question is, to what extent is the government delivering on its promises?

While policy strives to empower the youth, practice is far from this. The youth need a government that will view them as equal partners in development. They need security that their merchandise will not vanish in mysterious fires. The youth will continuously engage for a reformed youth development and empowerment agenda in Malawi. After all, they say a promise is a credit, right?

 

Related Articles

Check Also
Close
Back to top button