Govt asked to invest more in youth

Malawi joins the international community today in commemorating World Population Day (WPD) amid calls for government to invest more in the youth through education and provision of family planning services.

The theme for this year’s WPD is ‘Investing in the Youth’.

In its statement on WPD, Health and Rights Education Programme (HREP) notes that the recent elections showed that the youth are in majority in the country.

“Thus investing in the youth in controlling and managing population should be a priority. Our economy is not growing much to satisfy the youth expectations,” reads the statement.

HREP executive director Maziko Matemba said the day is important for Malawi where population is increasing by 400 000 per year.

“The theme is timely for Malawi, where investments in the youth are minimal as evidenced in the high school dropout rate of girls due to pregnancies and unavailability of a strong social protection programmes,” said Matemba.

At the London Family Planning Summit in 2012, government pledged to raise Malawi’s contraceptive prevalence rate (CPR) from 42 percent to 60 percent by 2020.

However, the 2010 Malawi Demographic Health Survey (DHS) shows that negative community perceptions of young people accessing contraception act as a key barrier to accessing services.