The Executive Director of Leap Africa, Mr. Femi Taiwo has said that youths in African are the engine block for sustainable development.
Taiwo said this when he appeared on a programme on TVC to mark the International Youth Day 2020.
The theme which is focused on youths engagement for global action highlighted the need to engage young people in local, national and global discuss.
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Taiwo said time had come for leaders in the continent to begin to come up with initiatives that would make the Sustainable Development Goals work for young people.
He said, “We need to see young people as a capital that can be deployed towards sustainable development.
“The youth capital needs to harnessed, needs to be enabled, needs to be deployed towards solving problems in our community and society.”
He added, “We have amazing entreprenuers championing change in different sectors, in education, employment, in healthcare and there are also young people leading the tech revolution in Africa.”
Taiwo explained that the Nigerian government has yet to do enough in terms of giving the youth the opportunity to develop their leadership potential.
“We have not taken education seriously. The investment you need to make in young people to help them fulfill their potential and ultimately help the continent and our world fulfill it potential is education and skills development.
“You see the bulk of young people have secondary education as their higher education; the question is how qualitative is the secondary education they receive? I can tell you for a fact that such level of education has no quality, am telling you from research and from facts and from field experience.
“We can’t just keep talking about these problems. In Leap Africa we believe in action, we believe in telling young people to take action and to take responsibility for their lives, for the organisation they’re working and for their community.”