Ghanaian politician, entrepreneur, and philanthropist Samuel Aryeequaye, has told African leaders to make youth empowerment their focus instead of giving them ‘peanuts’ for votes.
Speaking at this year’s edition of the Africa Humanitarian Actions Conference which took place in Abuja, Nigeria over the weekend, the Best Diplomat United Nation Simulation’s representative to Ghana said, the only way to see Africa gets better is having leaders who pays more attention to youth empowerment.
Research has shown that among all the continents on the globe, Africa has higher number of youth — more than 60% of it’s population are under the age of 30 — which many of them are desperate and have no or little hope.
According to him, most African leaders instead of educating the youth and creating jobs for them to be independent, they rather hoard monies and share to electorates which he believes is a bad practice.
Speaking extensively on this, the central regional chairman of the Liberal Party of Ghana and 2020 parliamentary candidate for Agona East mentioned that there is a higher rate of unemployment in Africa because the majority of African leaders hardly empower the youth and create an enabling environment for them to create jobs for themselves and others.
As a politician and philanthropist, one of his major priorities is to see the African youth gets better and by so doing whiles other politicians are sharing money for votes, he chooses to give young people in his constituency vocational training — a very great way of reducing the ‘galloping’ rate of unemployment.
He cited in his speech at the said conference that, in the constituency where he lost an election, he organized a skill training session for over two thousand young people of which majority of them are making a living out it.
Revealing one of his happiest moments in life, he gave an account on how some of the young people he trained walked up to him to say thank you and how the training is contributing to the betterment of their lives.
Samuel Aryeequaye is the brain behind ‘Saye Foundation,” an advocacy for change and growth. Say your mind, save the climate, save the world.