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27.02.2014 Feature Article

Chronicles Of A Youth No Less An Adult: The State Of Ghanaian Youth; If It Had Been Any Different

Chronicles Of A Youth No Less An Adult: The State Of Ghanaian Youth; If It Had Been Any Different
27.02.2014 LISTEN

For those of you my readers, I know by now you may have come to terms with my personality: That I am more youth than a Ghanaian. I am also no economist. Clearly, I am a youth but no less an adult, so I get to feel it when the economy sinks; when the hard times come to us as a nation.

I get to experience the hardship when I have to buy a bag of cement for GH₵25 when barely two months ago it was GH ₵ 20. I also get to experience the frustration when I have to stay in traffic for over 60 minutes just to get to my destination. Indeed I felt it when I paid GH ₵ 2 from Takoradi to my village when it was GH ₵ 1.40 a couple of weeks past. When I could not pay $560 for a training program I so much needed because the Cedis on me at the time could not much its equivalent.

And so by these I believe I do not need to get my statistics right, neither do I need to understand the Gross Domestic Output of the country and the essence of single-digit inflation and it associated fiscal policies to enable me speak of the ills of the economy.

It is in this same right that I debate the President's State of the Nation Address even if 'unempirical', without me being chastised for not being economically fundamental and informed. After all I am a living testimony to the increasing fuel hikes and the frequent power outages; again, if for nothing at all I have been taught to know that much of economics is based on assumptions.

And so even as a youth I have still got my say in how the economy is being managed. But then I will only restrict myself to the very interest of young people. Not just because I am youth but that young people constitute critical figure of over 50% of the total population.

Truly, it was no news to me. Not anything anticipating and out of ordinarily. Even as a youth I know it to be a constitutional provision. It is also not the first time a president has addressed Ghanaians on the state of the nation.

Again words are not in far fetch to deprive a whole President from making good of the nation such as Ghana even as we all acknowledge the challenges here with us.

Generally-delivery wasn't bad for a nation in crisis. After all we need no serious address to toughen our plights. We needed more jokes than language.

But then the critical challenges of young people could not be washed off with such jokes and so the President could not have said anything different than to repeat his talk of commitment towards such generation.

Indeed I would have been surprised if the President had said anything different from the most expecting antics that work on an Action and Implementation Plan for the National Youth Policy has been finalized; and that it is a major boost to youth development. Knowing well this is the state of policy direction Ghanaian youth find themselves. I guess in the next address we will be told of how the plan has been adopted, which will always not be different from the usual.

I would have wondered my where about if I had heard anything different from the ''ten million Ghana cedi (GH¢10million) Youth Enterprise Support (YES) initiative to provide opportunities for innovation and the creation of decent jobs by the youth of Ghana through mentorship and support''. When in political sense we are been told, that is how far we can think so we have created another avenue for politicians to steal from young people just as it happened with GYEEDA.

You do not need to tell us Mr President, we know you are doing these to indicate your commitment to young people not to develop them.

We know that to you, young people are unemployed because they have chosen to study ''softer course options' and programmes in ''business and the humanities at the expense of science, technology and allied courses'' which you say are ''increasingly in demand in an economy in transition from lower middle income to middle income status''.

We know that the state of Ghanaian youth is no less different from you having asked the ''Ministers of Education and Employment and Labour Relations to sponsor a joint survey of the professional and skills sets in demand in the Ghanaian labour market''.

Mr President if you care to know then hear this, what we need from schools is to raise critical thinkers. And this does not require one to study medicine or engineering. If you care then know that the operator of the fields you much talked about was founded by a man who is deep rooted in the humanities. He is not an engineer but rather an accounted in good standing who perceived and mobilised.

If you had said anything part from building youth centres across the country; establishing 200 day Senior High School; upgrading polytechnics into technical universities-if only young people even knew what that means; that another committee has been set up to siphon state money in the name of undertaking survey on skills gap; then I would have known you not to be a politicians.

The state of Ghanaian youth; if it had been different from making education a priority and free SHS; if it had been different from the increase in the intake of students in the University of Health and Allied Sciences in the Volta Region and the University of Energy and Natural Resources in the Brong Ahafo Region; if it had been different from the establishment of a new University in the Eastern and additional teacher training colleges; then it would have been that I was not in Mahama's better Ghana.

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