Following Ghana's bid to stage one of the best organised summits on the continent, cabinet has given approval for the Ministry of Youth and Sports to host about 2,000 youth in Africa for this year's African YouthConnekt Summit scheduled to take place from 11th - 13th October, 2021 on the theme â€Positioning the Youth to take advantage of the African continental free trade market".
To ensure a successful organisation of the Summit, the Minister for Youth and Sports, Hon Mustapha Ussif has inaugurated a committee to oversee the feverish preparations towards the organisation of the summit.
Inaugurating the committee, the Hon. Minister charged members to endeavour to organise an exceptional summit by ensuring that footprints from the summit could be traced beyond the event to provide evidence of achievement.
He noted that the era where such events were organised and follow up actions were not taken is now a thing of the past.
He indicated that the summit will serve as a platform for mindset change of the youth and open up their minds to the global opportunities available as far as the job market is concerned.
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According to the Minister, it is time to break the barriers between countries on the continent and re-orient the youth on the conversation of Pan Africanism for them to see themselves as one people ready to collaborate with ideas and expertise for the total development of the African youth.
He gave an extensive background of the summit since its inception and noted that the idea is a laudable one that should be embraced by all Africans adding that the brain behind it was conceptualized by the President of Rwanda, H.E Paul Kagame who thought of using the summit to connect the youth to their leaders, peers, governance activities and more importantly job opportunities in Rwanda but decided to scale it up to cover the African Region.
This is the first time the summit is being organized outside Kigali and Ghana is very much privileged to have the opportunity to host the teeming youth in the country to connect them to various ideas for development, he noted.
He expressed his confidence in the members of the committee and advised them to give their total commitment to make the country proud by organising a world class event in October.
The Chairman of the committee, the Deputy Minister for Youth and Sports, Hon Evans Opoku Bobie expressed gratitude to the Minister and noted that all over the world the youth have become the centre of focus because of the many challenges they face.
Members however have an opportunity to help mitigate the impact of their challenges and position them to take advantage of the summit to improve themselves.
Members of the committee are as follows:
Nelson Owusu Ansah, National Youth Authority, Akosua Asaa Manu, National Youth Authority, Fredrick Mugisha, UNDP, Sylvia Senu, UNDP, Amma Gyampo, scale up Africa Limited, Mohammed Nurudeen Ismaila, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, Nadel Majdoub, Ministry of National Security, Dina Boateng, Ministry of Youth and Sports, Kenneth Annang, Ministry of youth and sports Peter Kwasi Kodjie, All Africa Students Union, Theodora Williams Anti, Ghana Youth Federation, Samuel Korsah, Ministry of Youth and Sports Innocent Togoh, State Protocol, A representative from the African Continental Free Trade Area Secretariat and a representative from the Ghana Tourism Authority.