The Role of Young People in the African Renaissance – the Example of the Black Stars

The exploits of our youthful senior national football team, the Black Stars, in the ongoing soccer World Cup tournament shows that the youth do not have to wait for the future to be leaders.

It is very significant that in a year that Ghana and Africa has celebrated Kwame Nkrumah for all that he stood for, 23 young men from Ghana have chosen a stage such as the World Cup to display the inborn qualities of the African and make a strong statement on the role that young people can play in re-positioning Africa in the minds and hearts of citizens of this world.

For us, in the YMCA the youth whether in leadership or followership are partners in development. We cannot move this country forward without their abundant energy and exuberance as evidenced by the strength and pace Asamoah Gyan showed in scoring the winning goal for Ghana against the USA.

Very often young people are confined to the fringes of the decision-making process and the national development effort of the society because they are considered inexperienced. This line of thought is society’s admission of failure in seeing what young people bring to the table.

As a people we did not give the Black Stars a dog’s chance when they went to Angola to compete for the 2010 African Cup of Nations in January this year. With half of the team made up of players from our Under-20 side because of injuries to most of our senior players, we completely wrote the Black Stars off because of their ‘inexperience’. However, they got to the final and thereby built their confidence to perform on a bigger stage.

In the national development process all hands are needed on deck, so to confine the youth who form over 40 percent of the population to the periphery and fall on them only when some violent mission has to be carried out is a complete misdirection of energies.

The achievements of the Black Stars show that all that young people need to contribute to social transformation, is the guidance and encouragement of the rest of society. We have to acknowledge that they can be leaders in their own rights now rather than our clichéd reference to them as “the future leaders” when we do not take any proactive steps to equip them for leadership.

The integration of the Under-20 players into the Black Stars and their contribution to the overall team effort is a lesson in how to release the energies of young people and groom them for leadership.

The Ghana YMCA as a youth development organization believes in the potentials of young people and will do everything to develop them in body, mind and spirit in order to make them useful and productive citizens.

We have therefore started working with about 3000 young people in second cycle schools to give them leadership training and to improve their civic competence to enable them engage with the policy making process.

Prosper K. Hoeyi
National General Secretary

 


Source : [ Press Release – Ghana YMCA  -  07/09/2010  ]
 
 

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