Abdelmonem Fawzi
We are now eight years away from the deadline of implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in full.
It is important to ask now where Africa stands now in achieving the goals of the agenda.
At the end of 2019, five sustainable development dimensions, namely people, prosperity, planet, peace and partnership were off track.
Then Covid-19 struck, threatening to erase much of the continent’s progress in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Simply put, Africa’s achievement of the goals is at grave risk.
The good news is, however, that young people in Africa have pledged to work harder to ensure that the continent achieves its sustainable development goals by 2030.
In a virtual discussion organised by the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) under the theme, ‘Africa’s Youth in the Decade of Action: Actors or Bystanders’, youths from across the continent agreed to play a role in ensuring that Africa achieves the goals.
In her keynote address, climate and environment activist, Elizabeth Wanjiru Wathuti, commended her peers across Africa who are leaving no stone unturned to ensure that the SDGs are fulfilled by 2030.
“As a climate activist, I have not been sitting back and feeling helpless,” Wathuti said. “I started growing trees at the tender age of seven.”
Wathuti noted, however, that Africa’s youths need to be taken more seriously and that their voices and interests should be an integral part of decision-making processes.
“Youths’ engagement doesn’t mean inviting young people onto panels,” she said. “Serious engagement means internalising the fact that young people and future generations have the biggest stake in decisions made today.”
The United Nations Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth, Jayathma Wickramanayake, said Africa is blessed to have the world’s youngest population, with a median age of just 19.7 years.
She expressed confidence in youths’ ability to steer the continent’s trajectory in the 21st century, cautioning that their success or failure would also be that of the continent as a whole.
Vera Songwe, the United Nations under-secretary-general and ECA executive secretary, said despite its negative effects, Covid-19 has presented huge opportunities in the areas of innovation and tourism.
“It has shown that Africa has the potential to grow and create jobs for its youths,” she said.
She urged young people to use such opportunities to create their own jobs and become the employers and entrepreneurs for a prosperous Africa by 2030.
Songwe cited an ECA youth programme called ‘African Girls Can Code’, which links girls across Africa and enables them to learn the internet of things, artificial intelligence, and gaming – as an initiative that also creates jobs for young girls in the continent.
She said with the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), Africa can begin to manufacture on the continent and do value addition across the different sectors of its economies.
She pointed out that young people are those most affected by the SDGs.
“They stand to gain the most from high-quality education, decent work, gender equality and a healthy planet – or to lose the most if the world fails to reach those goals,” Songwe said. “Their energy, ideals and initiatives are crucial for achieving the goals.”
Emma Theofelus, Namibia’s deputy minister of information, communications and technology, said making data accessible to youths would go a long way to enhance Africa’s growth.
“We need young people in decision-making positions,” she said. “They should be at the tables where Africa’s future is being discussed.”
Adji Bousso Dieng, founder of The Africa I Know initiative, noted that investments in science, technology, engineering and mathematics are still missing.
“We don’t have the skills and infrastructure in place that can transform raw materials into final products for export,” she said. “This denies the youth employment opportunities on the continent.”
The need for increased collaboration to enhance growth in Africa was underscored by Thobo Khathola, managing director of tutoring company, Lion Tutoring, who expressed hope that AfCFTA would enable Africans collaborate even more.
The issue of unemployment, poverty and the lack of education was also raised by Achalake Christian Leke, executive director of LOYOC Cameroon, who described this as a ‘big problem’ for Africa that needs to be tackled immediately.
“This needs to be addressed if we want to see any progress on the continent,” Leke said.
The event served as a platform for young people to engage with leaders to renew their commitment to the 2030 Agenda and to advocate for urgency, ambition, and action to realise the SDGs; provide African youths with a virtual hub to mobilise and reflect on their needs and aspirations, and establish coalitions for positive change through the achievement of the goals.
It was also an opportunity for young leaders to share best practices, experiences, and challenges in their work towards the goals, and brainstorm concrete ideas and actions that young women and men can take in their respective communities, countries, and regions to ensure that Africa achieves the goals by 2030.
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