The partnership, which is between the Council, the National Service Secretariat (NSS) and the National Youth Authority (NYA), will among other things seek to empower the youth in the acquisition of skills.

The collaboration will also afford the Council the opportunity to work with NSS and NYA, in implement­ing its policies and programmes, to facilitate youth employment and development.

Speaking at the signing of the MoU in Accra, last Friday, the Country Director of the Council, Nii Dodoo Dodoo, said the part­nership sought to provide skills and opportunities to Ghana’s youthful population.

He said “today’s meeting here is to show the British Council’s ambi­tion to work with current potential partners to use the opportunities to address the challenges that this situation presents.”

Nii Dodoo said the Council was hoping to make the NSS more meaningful and impactful to enable service personnel to acquire critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

He explained that the growing youthful population presented op­portunities for the tapping of skills and capacities for socio-economic development of the country.

Mr Dodoo said the Council was not only seeking to facilitate youth employment, but also exploring ways of involving them more in climate change activities.

The Executive Director of the NSS, Mr Osei Assibey Antwi, said the scheme had shifted its focus from just deploying service person­nel to institutions to empowering them with professional skills, and competencies for the job market.

He said it had become necessary to equip young people with skills and training to enable them to gain meaningful employment, or be self-employed for national develop­ment.

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the NYA, Mr Pius Enam Hadzide, said empowering young people was not just a goal but a responsibility, a duty, and investment in a brighter and more prosperous future.

He said as a public institution directly responsible for the welfare of over 11.7 million youth in Ghana, the Authority had worked tirelessly to provide education, skills develop­ment, and opportunities for young people through pragmatic interven­tion programmes that addressed facets of their development.

“For the sake of this interaction, I shall limit my presentation to our three cardinal projects, namely Skills Towards Employability and Produc­tivity (STEP), the National Youth Volunteers Programme (NYVP), and Safeguarding the Teenage Girl (STG) project,” Mr Hadzide said.