African Youth have been urged to actively get involved in helping find lasting solutions to challenges confronting the continent and refrain from always looking up to governments even when citizens could readily offer solutions to challenges in their very immediate environs. The Founding President of Youth Icons Ghana made the call in an interview with African ripples magazine in his office in Accra, Ghana.
Nana Yaw Osei-Darkwa said the time had come for every African citizen to take their destiny into their own hands and commit to helping find lasting solutions to challenges confronting continent. He stressed “citizenship is not a spectator sport. It means more than just wishing something good might happen or cheering someone else on or just complaining about everything. It’s more than turning out to vote every four years. It means investing our time, energy, and resources to make a difference. If we fail to do this-if we consistently wait for others to solve the problems we see-then we muffle our voices, abdicate our responsibilities, and have little right to complain if things turn out badly”.
The Youth Icons Chief said every African must come to appreciate the fact that their name was tied to a particular challenge and that is why they are African citizens. He intimated that the African especially its youth must come to that firm conclusion that there was an issue out there that they hold the solution to and not necessarily governments.
Nana Yaw Osei-Darkwa further expressed “although governments have a responsibility towards its citizens, we citizens equally have a responsibility towards our motherland and common heritage-Africa. Partisan politics is fast destroying our society. Instead of committing and dedicating ourselves to the course of our respective nations and ultimately the continent of Africa, we now owe allegiances more to political parties with our respective countries and Africa being the end loser” He intimated that the current continental challenges of violent conflicts, poverty, disease and functional illiteracy could be attributed largely to citizens reneging on their sacred responsibility of ensuring that mother Africa remains peaceful, healthy and its citizens highly educated and economically empowered. He stressed “why should the world be gripped with fear because Africa’s power house goes to the polls to elect its leaders? Why should citizens of Nigeria be scared because they go to elect their leaders? I must say this is not peculiar to Nigeria but the entire continent anytime a nation within it goes to the polls. Does some “big brother” somewhere always have to prompt us to act? Where is our sense of responsibility then, to even ensure that we take charge of our own immediate environments? I entreat the youth of Africa to eschew violence because that undermines their very future. Without a peaceful environment nothing can be guaranteed. Africans must therefore come to the conclusion that under no circumstances should the peace architecture of African nations be disturbed. If we will all act as responsible citizens what was there to fear. African leaders must desist from paying lip service to peace and go a step further to investing in the peace. By this I do not mean allocating huge budgets to the security agencies but investing in the quality of humans through the institutionalization of nonviolence education. Ghana would once again take the lead in this direction as my organization Youth Icons Ghana hold a very important lecture on World Peace day in recommending a roadmap for helping address violence in Ghana in a more sustainable way.”
He opined that the time has come for all Africans to make some sober reflections on the way forward because the collective future of Africa although promising would have to work for it.“We cannot continue playing the spectator sport and expect magic to happen. We are blessed with great talents and human resource as well as natural resources and we have to be ashamed how majority of our citizens are wallowing in abject poverty.”
Nana Yaw Osei-Darkwa challenged governments to desist from seeing citizens who decide to play active roles in the governance process by voicing out wrongs and constructively criticizing them as enemies. “it is not even natural to have everybody singing your praise or agreeing to every policy you put out there. People would always have different opinions about issues and we should learn to accommodate ourselves as one people. I do not want to believe that there is any true African whose prayer is to see the continent not progress.Rather it is our blind conformity to our political parties agenda’s and our inability to criticize our own political parties when things go wrong that has led to our nations divided on partisan political lines instead of seeing ourselves as one people. It’s all about us against them, with governments defending every single thing they do and oppositions seeing no good in governments. How can we develop with such prejudiced stance and jaundicedlenses”.
He further challenged institutions both private and public to institute a culture of rewarding people for sticking their necks out and helping solve challenges confronting them, this way we would be encouraging Africans to go out there and participate in the processes because they would be recognized for their small contributions.
Nana Yaw Osei-Darkwa said there were some high levels of citizens’ apathy which steps need to be taken to reverse with immediate effect. He indicated that Youth Icons Ghana has over the past six years positioned itself as an active corporate citizen committed to helping empower the youth of Africa consolidate the peace of their respective countries by engaging the civic space. He posited that the peace of African nations remains the single most important item those nation needed and not foreign direct investment. “We must come to the conclusion that capital has choice and so the peace architecture of our respective countries must be intact all the time because there is no way we would attract investment in a situation of violent conflict. That is why we have positioned ourselves as vanguards of the peace of Ghana and Africa with our activities gradually stretching beyond the borders of Ghana to sister African nations like Tanzania. We should never take the peace architecture of our individual nations and that of the entire continent for granted. I can tell you on authority that the peace of nations like Ghana or Botswana is what keeps them going and not its oil cocoa or gold.”
Nana Osei-Darkwa called on the youth of Africa not to allow external forces to determine their personal development and success. He stressed “the numerous challenges provide us unique opportunities to develop ourselves and succeed. All we need to do is to put on our creative caps on and help find solutions to the numerous challenges. Once we come up with solutions, we get rewarded. He intimated that wealth making was tied to meeting the needs of the masses through creativity and so once we are able to find solutions to challenges we make some money.So let the numerous challenges hone our creativity to find solutions whiles creating wealth. The youth of Africa must never lose hope in the continent, we have to consistently believe in the African dream and the fact that through our collective efforts Africa shall prevail and become a powerhouse in the world.
He challenged African youth to believe in themselves and never allow themselves to be intimidated. Nana urged African youth never to lose hope because the moment we do we expose ourselves to all forms of manipulations.
He further challenged African leaders to desist from mortgaging the continents future through reckless decisions and stinging corruption which points to a very bizarre future if not curtailed and nibed in the bud. “our leaders must start engaging the youth in policy formulation and implementation to ensure that the leaders of tomorrow were in sync with the future plans of their respective nations of which they were the natural custodians of the future.
