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Mandela writes

PYU Congress outcomes, what are the key areas for intervention.

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Finally, there is light at the end of the tunnel, it has been resolved that the Panafrican Youth Union Congress should take place from 17th to the 20th of June in Brazzaville, Congo.

It is my hope that the Congress shall lead to at least three things, all of which shall in my view lead to a framework for a much improved and strengthened organisation. Plus shall lead to better cohesion in the often confusing and muddled youth development sector of Africa.

1. There should be a mechanism for the inclusion of civil society youth organisation. This is an often confusing subject, because of the deliberate misinformation that exist on what National Youth Council are and how they should be constituted. National Youth Council is the generic term we use to describe National Youth Platforms in Africa, at the moment we estimate that there are 35 entities that resemble this. This is based on the fact that they are broad based, democratic, youth lead and focused organisations. There should be no pseudo or real dichotomy based on ‘pro government national youth councils’ and ‘non government national youth councils’, this in my view is absurdity of a degree I cannot even begin to fathom. The simple formula is democratic broad based youth organisation for each country, which ever way it is codified nationally is the affair of that country. If our experience in the future teaches are that there are flaws in the above arrangement then we should endeavour to change that. That being the case, the question then is how we bring into the fray those organisation that are not national platforms but whom do good work on the continent. Provided they meet certain criteria, which I hope will be clearly spelled out in Brazzaville.
bOrganisations such as the african Burea of the Souts,YWCA,YMCA, the IUSY, WFDY and AISIEC members in Africa amongst others, for example should be able to join the PYU as members.


2. There must be discussion of funding the programs and secretariat (professional not political) of the Union, there is no we there can exist expectation of a dynamic and vibrant youth formation in Africa if we do not talk about how to fund it, we have ignored this aspect of the issue for far to long and whether one likes it or not it is the key most critical hole in the Issue. How do we run a HQ with programs and ability to respond to the resolutions of both the Congress and Executive committee if we don’t think about a core resource base? Of course once we have competent and experienced staff we will be able to expand this resource base by attracting donor and program funding. There is no chicken or egg scenario like some argues there must be a budget before there are outcomes full stops.


3. The Union must expand it operational base. It is obviously not ideal for us to be based in the furthest most northern part of the continent, consider for example the fact that there are not many connections by flight between the various regions save perhaps with East Africa. Even basic things like phone calls and sending faxes can be complicated and rather expensive; it then becomes necessary for us to think of ways in which we can expand our operations and visibility. One of the obvious ways to do so, would be for this Congress to resolve to have and maintain a liaisons Bureau in Addis Ababa (Nairobi, or Jo’burg at the least preferably Addis) this is to allow the organisation proximity to Panafrican political institutions and the donor community. The bulk of our efforts are advocacy and should perhaps be research based, we can best achieve this by having some form of regular contact with the stated entities, plus the city(ies) are well connected to all other major hubs by air. We then don’t have to engage in this impasse of whether to move the head office or not.

Of course there are other pieces to the puzzle that are missing but these are the once that in my experience will be necessary to plug these gapping holes in our existing operations.

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