The Chief Executive of the Stanbic Bank Ghana, Mr Kwamina Asomaning, has stressed the need to devise workable solutions to solve the challenges of the youth in the country.

He said the workable solutions must increase focus and investments in vocational and technical training through deliberate policies, financial support, effective career counselling and subject choices at school.

Speaking at the 2021 Business Roundtable discussions organised by Ismael Yamson and Associates, he said the importance of Africa’s youth to nation building could not be overemphasised, given their numbers.

“In Ghana, for example, our youth population was estimated at 10 million in 2017, making up 35 per cent of the country’s population. However, the responsibility for ensuring that they contribute effectively to our nation-building process is a collective one that lies with policy makers, educational and corporate institutions, parents and the youth themselves,” he stated.

The roundtable discussion was held on the theme; ‘Youth Driven and Youth Centered Development: Africa’s Future.

Mr Asomaning spoke on the topic ‘Towards a Purposeful Approach to Youth-Centered Development in Africa.

He said the implications of not fully developing the potential of any vibrant youth population could be dire, possibly leading to significant economic losses, armed conflict, social upheaval and political instability as previously prevalent in places such as Burundi, DRC and Rwanda.

Challenges of youth

Mr Asomaning categorised the challenges confronting the youth into three buckets.

He said bucket one were those in very deprived financial circumstances or for whom education isn’t practical for various reasons such as those who are academically challenged but gifted with their hands.

Bucket two are those in positions where the ability to pursue formal education is truncated after the completion of basic education; Bucket three are those who are fortunate enough to have opportunities for formal education and employment but cannot afford to rest on their oars; they must constantly evolve as the world evolves.

“I would argue that quite a large proportion of our youth in Ghana fall in the first and second buckets. At the risk of belabouring the point, we all know the role that poverty plays in this predicament of ours. “The slowdown in poverty reduction was due to a drop in the rate at which economic growth translated into poverty reduction. A quick look at the June 2019 Ghana Living Standards Survey Report indicates that the annual household expenditure among the poorest in Ghana is GH?5,168. If we juxtapose this figure to the annual household income of GH?5,880 among the same group, it becomes more glaring how the opportunities available to the youth on other continents may elude their counterparts in Ghana,” he explained.

He, however, pointed out that some of these problems are being solved with interventions such as Free Compulsory Basic Education and now Free SHS - interventions that have also been embraced by institutional poverty leading to the lack of appropriate infrastructure.

“Nevertheless, assuming the child with such background successfully passes through the system, what will happen after these initial interventions?

The chief executive said the first step on this remedial journey was the provision of good quality and relevant education that did not only respond to the exigencies of today’s world but also prepared the minds of young Africans for the future.

“If we look to the world around us, the heads of some of the most successful companies in the world - Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Apple’s Tim Cook, Google’s Sundar Pichai, AMD’s Lisa Su, Tesla’s Elon Musk have one thing in common: They are engineers – they have had rigorous training in mathematical and scientific approaches to solving problems and are not too shy to get into the technical details of the product or service,” he pointed out.

Beyond developing a purposeful approach towards STEM education, he also urged African countries to place greater emphasis on higher vocational learning and disabuse the minds of the youth that the university title and university route are an assured path to achieving career success.