... seeks to give African youth a voice to articulate their issues and an opportunity for them to be recognized as partners in development and employment creation.
Introduction
The World Youth Report 2003 estimates that there are more than 1 billion young people between the ages of 15-24 and that 85 % of them live in developing countries. Moreover, youth in developing countries, are rarely consulted in important policy decisions, yet the decisions made largely impact them in the long and short term.
Studies have shown that there is a link between employment and social exclusion. The inability to gain reasonable employment often results a sense of vulnerability, uselessness and idleness amongst the youth and increases their tendencies towards illegal activities. Youth can play an active role in sustainable development and should be accepted as partners in finding solutions to the world's problems.
The ATPS youth programme seeks to give African youth a voice to articulate their issues and an opportunity for them to be recognized as partners in development and employment creation. The programme has received ample support from the Technical Center for Agricultural and Rural cooperation (CTA) and the African Technology Policy Studies Network (ATPS) since inception.
The objectives of the pilot youth meeting are:
To share experiences in harnessing opportunities in the areas of agriculture, science and technology for employment and wealth creation and build self-reliance of African youths to innovate and adopt strategies that can be used to exploit opportunities.
To create opportunities for peer-to-peer networking among the African youth and use this network to popularize science, technology and innovation for socio-economic development in Africa, focusing on the agri-food chain.
To expose the youth to the science, technology and innovation (ST&I) policy making processes and determine the possible roles and opportunities for ensuring their involvement so that they can play a greater advocacy role and their concerns can be advanced and adopted.
To provide a forum for peer-to-peer learning on issues of HIV/AIDS and behavioural change amongst the youth with a view to reducing the rates of new infections.
ATPS is also committed to supporting activities that expose the youth to issues of science for development particularly through its existing affiliation with universities that can easily facilitate university based science clubs for youth-youth knowledge and information exchange.
