• Radio queen seeks ways to help African youth reach their full potential.
• The theme of the event is, 'Africa Unite for Youth: Bridging the Gap & Reaching Afloat Youth'.
Image: Courtesy
Radio queen and social activist Adelle Onyango will be attending the 2nd Pan-African Youth Forum in Ethiopia, Addis Ababa that begins today until Saturday.
The theme of the event is, 'Africa Unite for Youth: Bridging the Gap & Reaching Afloat Youth'.
"It means that as a young African, I can be part of making solutions to create environments that allow African youth to reach their full potential," Adelle told Word Is.
"The Adelle Onyango Initiative already has programmes running that create opportunities for the youth. I’d like to be able to meet other young Africans with similar programmes and work on partnerships that allow us to scale and reach more youth."
Adelle said one of the key areas that need to be addressed is education.
"Are we truly equipping young people with information that is relevant to the changing market?" she asked.
"When it comes to entrepreneurship, we need to review policies that lock our African youth from being able to build businesses that will actually solve some of Africa’s problems.
"Also, representation in key leadership roles; there are not enough young people represented in governance roles."
The Pan-African Youth Forum will engage young people at political and socio-economic levels to propose tangible solutions to youth-centric issues.
During the forum, AU Commission chair Moussa Mahamat will inaugurate a Youth Congress and introduce his 1 Million by 2021 Initiative. This aims to directly reach millions of young Africans by creating opportunities in four key areas: Education, Employment, Entrepreneurship and Engagement.
The forum is organised in five segments, namely Capacity Building Sessions, Pan African Youth Congress, Thematic Co-Creation Summit, and a Commitment Roundtable by youth development stakeholders.
A marketplace on best practices in Africa in the key priority youth areas will run concurrent to all the sessions. Young people will be at the centre of the forum and will co-create solutions and strategies to operationalise the initiative.