Secretariat announces youth entrepreneur programme

The Commonwealth Secretariat will be placing youth entrepreneur and technical experts in five Commonwealth African countries to enhance the capacity of young people to start small-scale enterprises through micro-credit.

Commonwealth Secretary-General Kamalesh Sharma announced the programme to boost sustainable employment and reduce poverty among young people at a conference on ‘Investing in Youth Employment’, organised by the Secretariat’s Youth Affairs Division (YAD) in London last week.

Cameroon, Namibia, Nigeria, Swaziland and Zambia approached the Secretariat to partner in the development of a credit youth scheme under the auspices of the Commonwealth Youth Credit Initiative (CYCI).

The CYCI is an integrated package of micro-credit, enterprise training and business support targeted at young women and men (18-35), designed to encourage youth employment through the promotion of youth entrepreneurship.

The experts will provide technical support to the CYCI, in collaboration with the Commonwealth Youth Programme Regional Centre for Africa, in Cameroon, Namibia and Swaziland, and support new initiatives in Nigeria and Zambia.

‘Investing in Youth’

Delegates at the conference from 9 to 10 May discussed youth entrepreneurship and enterprise development and reviewed the challenges and opportunities with youth employment in Commonwealth member countries.

Mr Sharma said any progress on youth employment was dependent on strategic partnerships with banks, chambers of commerce, civil society and the media.

“We need to emphasise the advantages of the young. There is a need for education, training, skills development, mentoring and enterprise creation to create a self-employed generation,” he said.

Conference delegates included representatives from high commissions; corporate sector and financial institutions; Commonwealth Youth Programme Regional Centres; the Youth Employment Network (YEN); the World Bank; the International Labour Organization (ILO); members of the Commonwealth Youth Caucus network; civil society organisations; and young entrepreneurs.

Highlighting a 2010 ILO report that indicated that youth unemployment is increasing, interim Head of YAD Henry Charles outlined the challenges of addressing the issue: “While we must recognise the important work being done to address youth unemployment, we must also be mindful that what we are addressing are really symptoms of a particular development model.

“Unless we hope to transform this development model, we may report improvements here and there but fundamentally, would we have made this world a more equitable place in terms of distribution of resources? We must be more mindful of the fact that more fundamental issues are contributing to what we are addressing here – the issue of youth unemployment and the young feeling they are not getting an equitable share of resources.”

Kenya’s Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports, Dr Paul Nyongesa Otuoma, said the formal economy was not creating jobs to match the demands of an expanding demography of young working people.

“There has been economic growth but this does not automatically lead to job creation – 2.5 million youth in Kenya are currently looking for employment in the formal sector and this number will rise to 3.5 million by next year. It is necessary to undertake innovative job initiatives.”

Emmanuel Dennis, a young entrepreneur and chief executive of the Green Teams Initiative, Kenya, said the current financial and ecological crises required new business models.

“The Green Teams Initiative organises young people into a positive community building force that is generating revenues and also tackling ecological challenges through a bottom-up approach. It speaks to the needs of the youth who desperately require the kind of skills and training we offer to get them to economic independence,” he said.

Last year the Secretariat, in association with the Central Bank of India (CBI), launched a Youth Enterprise Financing Programme in four districts in India. The initiative has assisted 95 enterprises so far, directly impacting 575 jobs.

Speaking at the conference, Srinivasan Sridhar, Chairman and Managing Director of CBI, said entrepreneurship, whether micro or macro, is essentially creating economic resurgence in today’s economic landscape.

“Youth enterprises, which are generally small or micro enterprises, have a special role to play in enterprise development, perhaps disproportionate to the value of investment they attract. Youth enterprises require support because they contain in them the germ of large enterprise; they incorporate local dimensions of entrepreneurship to a greater degree than larger enterprises through the use of local resources and local talent; they tend to be more innovative and bring new ideas to the table, and respond more swiftly to demands; and lastly, they represent a useful and constructive way of channelling the energy and vitality of the youth.”

Mr Sridhar continued that an “eco-system”, favourable to the development of youth enterprises, was needed. “This eco-system will be a multi-stakeholder partnership that will nurture youth entrepreneurship and enterprises.”

Markus Pilgrim, manager of YEN, said a unique feature of the conference, was the good mix of participants – specialists, practitioners, as well as youth representatives.

“Not many such conferences invite youngsters to express their views and that’s the reason why the youth present here feel empowered,” he said.

“The difference their presence makes is that they are impatient and quite critical, and this forces us to be clear and precise and not end up in vague political statements.”

This observation was backed by Cindy Chng, the Regional Youth Caucus representative for Singapore: “Instead of just documenting what governments do we are forwarding proposals. This represents a shift from earlier meetings where we said this is the message we want to bring across to the government. Here, we are coming up with a plan.”