On Youth Day, let’s trade empty speeches for real empowerment, or risk breeding a generation of frustrated, wasted potential.
By Dr. Chitalu Chilufya.
Lusaka, Mar. 12 – Today’s Youth Day, on the “Voices Amplified and Innovations Ignited” is an awakening momemt, not just for the youths themselves, but the national leadership that owes them a future.
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We, in leadership, especially those in the Executive, owe this generation an innovative future. We we pay lipservice to the very idea that youths need empowerment, real empowerment to amplify not just their voices, but the skill and talent that is latent in most of them.
This latent talent going to waste due to disempowerment afflicting millions of our youths, creates an apocalyptic near future for all of us.
To ignite an innovative future for our youths, we need to pick the incredible ideas of young men such as Chisenga Makasa, a 25 year old a talented youth creating a living out of assembling bicycles at the roadside.
We must quickly come to a realisation that unless we harness the energy of youth and direct them to productive ends, we may end up nurturing a toxic, disruptive army of a disempowered generation. A generation of regret and missed opportunity. A generation full of disruptive energy.
The energy of the youth is the very condition precedent for innovative action. When the promise and opportunity of youth is lost now, we would have lost a generation. The period of youth is to be found in the first important 30 years; this formative generation sets us up for what we do in the future.
The energy of youth is the nucleus of innovation; youth is not just a demographic expression of age distribution, but the very embodiment of the full expression of skill and talent.
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Innovative and amplified voices are not just to be pursued in the elevated intellectual chambers of law and medical schools of our universities; not just in elite business and engineering schools of the privileged few, but in the very seemingly low places such roadside carpentry shops, welding corners and fishing camps where some of most talented our youths ply their trade for a living.
Let us amplify those subdued voices and unleash the invaluable innovative talent embedded in the thousands of many of our youths.
About The Author: Dr. Chilufya, a PF presidential candidate, is a public health physician, Mansa Central Member of Parliament and former Minister of Health who led the radical transformation of the Zambia national health system in pursuit of Universal Health Coverage.
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