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Sunyani, Tuesday, June 07, 2022
An African Youth Entrepreneurship Summit to raise youth entrepreneurship awareness and tackle unemployment and its menace in Africa has been launched in Sunyani.

The summit, dubbed ‘YES-Africa’ to be held in Sunyani in November this year was conceived by the Sunyani Youth Development Association (SYDA), a youth development focused Association established in 2015 to seek skill competencies and capacities for vulnerable young boys and girls to improve their livelihoods through skill training.

The YES-Africa launched on Tuesday was a continental development project that focuses on raising youth entrepreneurship awareness and top-notch engagement to help actualize concepts of many youths that have the potential to impact Africa’s development in areas that would see them evolve to make the needed impact globally.

The project focuses on bringing together African leaders, youth ministers, development partners, businesses, entrepreneurs many others to vividly discuss how the entire continent could factor and go by tailored entrepreneurship direction for the young ones in the areas of agriculture, sports, skills training, factories and education and youth empowerment that aimed at employment opportunities for poverty eradication in Africa.

This summit would be made up of workshops on entrepreneurship development, developing football entrepreneurs, coaching and mentoring sessions, integrity driven workshops, grand expo and other interactive sessions for connections and link creation.

The idea is to create room for a broader consultation and access to support for most youths who have interest to become great entrepreneurs to help lift the burdensome yoke of unemployment on the African continent.

Madam Fati Bamba, the Bono, Bono East and Ahafo regions Director of the National Youth Authority (NYA) Officially launched the event on behalf of Mr. Pius Hadzide, the Chief Executive Officer.

Madam Bamba reiterated  the critical need for African governments and all key stakeholders to collaborate with the Association for the betterment of youth across the continent in the areas of entrepreneurship, saying, youth has the highest population in Africa and their success was going to be the success of the entire continent.

African governments therefore have a key role to play in the summit, looking at its holistic benefits because entrepreneurship could employ millions of youths to enable them contribute meaningfully toward the development of their respective countries, communities and the continent at large, she stressed.

Mad. Bamba called on the Ghana Enterprises Agency, Youth in Community development Secretariat, Youth Employment Agency and the Nation Builders Corp (NABCO) Secretariat to come on board as well as all youth leaders across Africa, Non Governmental Organizations, Entrepreneurs, development partners and investors to support the laudable initiative.

Earlier in his welcome address, Mr. Atta Akoto Senior, President of the Association said “we strongly believe that the African Youth is capable if given the right support”.

SYDA’s YES-Africa evolved out of our thoughts of findings ways of addressing the problems that inflict our continent at the community level and could be made a reality with the collaboration and support of all as we dare to be ambitious in finding ways of raising above the usual rhetoric of crying out loud our woes as a continent on issues such as youth unemployment, poverty, threatening famine and many more, he said.

Mr. Akoto Senior explained SYDA`s core operational areas were “Youth Development Advocacy, Community Development Advocacy and Youth Empowerment through Skill Training and Educational Empowerment” and the YES-Africa project factors of all such cardinal operational areas.

On behalf of the Sunyani Traditional Council, Nana Kusi Boadum, also a Board Member of the Association assured the Traditional Council`s full support for SYDA and the YES-African summit.

Later in an interview, Mr. John Asnu Kumi, the Sunyani Municipal Chief Executive (MCE) lauded the initiative, saying, considering the number of graduates produced by the tertiary institutions in Ghana and across Africa every year, government policies and intervention alone could not absorb them all for employment.

He was therefore optimistic an event of such nature is a laudable idea that would equip the individuals cognitively for jobs creation”.