Today I happened to be among the 20 youth leaders in Kenya sitting in the SKIKA NATIONAL YOUTH CONSULTATIONS forum to deliberate on the solutions to silencing guns in Africa and bringing sustainable peace to Africa through democratic governance processes.
Among the major issues discussed was unemployment and underemployment as a cause for conflict in Africa and in particular resource conflicts. The other sub-topic was on radicalization and extremism amongst the African youths. Finally, we deliberated on Ethnicity and Identity Conflict in the African context.
My finding from a thorough analysis of the three sub-topics was that they all had a link to economic empowerment of the youths specifically.
The unemployed and underemployed youths need to be empowered economically through employment and full employment in this case. The marginalized youths and those frustrated in poverty too need to be empowered economically so that they do not end up in extremist terror groupings.
And finally, the major spring for negative ethnicity is in the either real or perceived inequitable resource allocation, with some communities appearing to be or actually being favored in resource allocation. This fuels ethnic hatred and people fight each other more-so during elections in a bid to gain control of the resources for their communities through political power. It therefore emerged that if all communities were empowered economically and we had equitable resource distribution, then we would silence guns in Africa.
And that is when I realized how #entrepreneurship is a powerful tool in empowering the youths economically and help in silencing guns in Africa, strengthening democratic governance and maintaining sustainable peace in Africa. #dgtrends #skika
Think about that!
