Accra, July 9, GNA – Ghana is set to host this year’s African YouthConneckt Summit which will attract 2000 young people from across the continent.
The event is scheduled to take place from 11th – 13th October 2021 on the theme,” Positioning the Youth to take advantage of the African Continental Free Trade Market.”
To ensure a successful organisation of the Summit, the Minister of Youth and Sports, Mr Mustapha Ussif, has inaugurated a Committee to oversee preparations towards the organisation of the summit.
Inaugurating the Committee, the Minister, charged the members to endeavour to organise an exceptional summit by ensuring that footprints from the summit could be traced beyond the event to provide evidence of achievement.
He noted that the era where such events were organised and followed up actions were not taken was now a thing of the past.
Mr Ussif indicated that the summit would serve as a platform for mindset change of the youth and open up their minds to the global opportunities available as far as the job market was concerned.
According to the Minister, it was time to break the barriers between countries on the continent and re-orient the youth on the conversation of Pan Africanism for them to see themselves as one people ready to collaborate with ideas and expertise for the total development of the African youth.
He gave an extensive background of the summit since its inception and noted that the brain behind it was the President of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, who thought of using the summit to connect the youth to their leaders, peers, governance activities, and more importantly job opportunities in Rwanda but decided to scale it up to cover the African Region.
“This is the first time the summit is being organized outside Kigali and Ghana is very much privileged to have the opportunity to host the teeming youth in the country to connect them to various ideas for development,” he noted.
He expressed confidence in the members of the committee and advised them to give their total commitment to making the country proud by organising a world-class event in October.
The Chairman of the committee, the Deputy Minister of Youth and Sports, Evans Opoku Bobie, expressed gratitude to the Minister and noted that all over the world, young people had become the centre of focus because of the many challenges they faced.
Members of the committee are Nelson Owusu Ansah, National Youth Authority, Akosua Asaa Manu, National Youth Authority, Fredrick Mugisha, UNDP, Sylvia Senu, UNDP, Amma Gyampo, scale-up Africa Limited, Mohammed Nurudeen Ismaila, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, Nadel Majdoub, Ministry of National Security, Dina Boateng, Ministry of Youth and Sports.
The rest are Kenneth Annang, Ministry of Youth and Sports, Peter Kwasi Kodjie, All Africa Students Union, Theodora Williams Anti, Ghana Youth Federation, Samuel Korsah, Ministry of Youth and Sports, Innocent Togoh, State Protocol, A representative from the African Continental Free Trade Area Secretariat and a representative from the Ghana Tourism Authority.