Written By Vanessa Kariuki |
Ababu Namwamba has urged Kenyan youth to choose their leaders with a higher ideal and a bigger purpose.
“We need to move away from the transactional nature of our politics to adopt a higher ideal in our political engagements. As youth leaders, you must raise the bar of your ideals and hold your leaders to higher standards,” said the CS.
His remarks were made this morning during the presentation of the Youth Situational Analysis Report by Youth Alive Kenya in collaboration with the National Youth Council Voice.
Namwamba challenged the youth to crack the puzzle of inclusivity to bring on board the youth in determining the course of leadership in Kenya.
“Kenya is a vibrant democracy yet our youth feel disconnected. We must ask ourselves why? Why is this happening when young people have access to more information with the explosion of the digital space and when our leadership space is largely youthful? Are we saying that these large number who are largely the youth are not speaking the language their language?” Posed the CS.
Namwamba called for deeper collaboration between partners and greater coordination of the youth sector interventions to work together in spaces of lifting up young people. He challenged the youth leaders to leverage ICT to expand youth opportunities.
“The government is investing heavily in the digital superhighway agenda. Our #TalantaHela initiative seeks to plug into this space to generate revenues and have them flow into the economy from social media platforms such as the META space. We are determined to commercialize talent so that in the case of music, film, or sport, we do not just do it for entertainment, but to make money and support the whole ecosystem of livelihoods. Some of the biggest economies on the planet have turned the creative industry into mega drivers of their economies,” said Namwamba.
He also noted, “We saw during the height of covid, the UK government returning football in the midst of a pandemic, even though they knew they weren’t going to allow people in the stadiums. This is because football is a huge part of its economy. The conomy has commercialized and monetized football to a point where it is a key driver of the economy. This is what we want to do here in Kenya and we are going to do it through our #TalantaHela initiative.”
The State of the Youth report aims to summarise the main conclusions and suggestions on how state and non state actors should collaborate on youth empowerment initiatives and activities.
