AFRICAN countries have been urged to make bold decisions in tackling the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and ensure the continent’s economies are able to rebuild faster after the pandemic.
BY ANDREW KUNAMBURA
Speaking during an African youth ministers consultative meeting on COVID-19 on Wednesday, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa executive secretary Vera Songwe said Africa needed to remain awake and help find solutions to the pandemic as restrictions put in place to curtail the virus begin to be eased. “This is a time to be bold. It is a time when we need to come together to ask if we are responding to the call of the youth,” Shongwe said. “Today our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change. No time ever in our history have we been at such a crossroads where we have both a health pandemic and an economic recession on the continent.”
Songwe said 51% of Africa’s growth was in the services sector and required technology, raising the need for member States to move with speed to address crippling internet issues across the continent.
“My plea to you as ministers of youth is, please join us, work with us and together let us implement the African digital transformation strategy and increase access, affordability, stability and reliability of the internet system so that many other things can begin to fall into place,” she said.
Songwe said recent consultations with African youths had clearly revealed their hunger and thirst to participate in decision-making processes so that they can help bring change through innovation. “But they need our institutions to come along and to respond to them and to ensure that together we can deliver this future that we have so long wanted — an Africa that we want,” she said. African youth ministers, Songwe said, should work with ICT and education ministries to ensure curricula are in line with the job market, inequalities in access to school are removed, and that broadband internet access is available for all.
She also implored African leaders to sign the protocol on the free movement of persons saying this would greatly aid the youth who want to move across the continent, especially to innovative hubs in countries such as Kenya and Rwanda. Industrialisation, Songwe said, was the only way Africa could stop its youths from dying in the oceans trying to cross to other countries, especially Europe. Zambia’s Youth, Sport and Child Development minister Emmanuel Mulenga said the onus was on African nations to build an environment that would provide the youth with opportunities that support their dreams and aspirations. Aya Chebbi AU youth envoy, Julitta Onabanjo (UNFPA deputy executive director), Henrietta Fore (Unicef executive director) and Sarah Anyang Agbor (African Union Commissioner for Human Resources, Science and Technology), also spoke during the opening session in support of initiatives to assist Africa’s youth during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
