Youths in  Africa urgently need post-school skills and support to shape implementation of Sustainable Development Goals in the continent, according to Leap Africa.

The Nigeria based firm that focuses on youth leadership development in the continent, says most youths lack a clear understanding of sustainability goals, while those who do lack adequate skills to drive the process

In an interview, Leap Africa executive director Kehinde Ayeni said based on the firm’s assessment, it is evident that youths under the age of 35 are a vibrant segment of the society, and play a critical role in the drive towards sustainable development.

This is because they form a majority of the people behind community development projects and innovations that have for instance, seen the emergence of tech start-ups for development.

“They therefore need to be accelerated through upskilling, to make them more profitable in projects they do, sustainable and attractive to more funders,” Ayeni said.

She said this would that it would help scale up the pace towards 2030 SDG goals which the continent is still lagging behind on.

“Some of the goals will go even beyond 100 years from now, with so many stones still unturned, among them the niche of empowering and upskilling individuals through partnerships.”

She acknowledged that among the challenges slowing Kenya and other African countries towards achieving the goals is the doubt of whether they are doing enough or not.

Lack of combined support from the government, civil community and the private sector is also another challenge.

It is in this backdrop that the firm is now in the country targeting youths with its accelerator programmes through the fourth edition of the Pan Pan-African ‘Youth Day of Service (YDoS)’campaign.

Dubbed ‘Youthful and Useful’, the social impact campaign kicked off on August 12, and will run to the end of this month.

Through the programmes, Ayeni noted that youths in the country will get up skilling and funding opportunities from different partners to support their sustainable development projects. 

First time project leaders stand to access at least $500 (Sh71,850) of funding 

Partnering with Dow, a global leader in materials science, the firm seeks to foster the spirit of service to community and volunteerism among the youth population in the country and in Africa.

ChildFund International regional director Chege Ngugi  said African countries should focus more on increasing investments through the government and other stakeholders in youth development programs.

“While many laudable initiatives, such as national youth funds exist, there is still a dire need to do more to ensure all youth, given the huge number, are adequately resourced to achieve their best potential,” Chege said.