Women, youths, tech are Africa’s partway to development- Ezekwesili
By EricJames Ochigbo
Former Minister of Education, Ms Obiageli Ezekwesili says Africa would lead the world if it harnesses the potential of women, youths and technological advancement.
Ezekwesili said this at the weekend while speaking via zoom at a village square titled, ‘Reawakening the Africa Renaissance: the Pathways to Inclusive Growth and Development.
She said that women, youths and technological advancement are the game changers if Africa was to be fully explored.
The former minister said that Africa’s average age which was about 18.6 years compared to other continents which was more than 40 years, remained a basic asset.
According to her, Africa is the youngest continent and there is so much locked up in the young people.
“African young people are already showing the world that they can add value and compete globally despite the challenges that holds them back.
“Such challenges like bad governance; if taken away, they can surpass the production and ideas others puts on the table.
“Africa’s women if fully included in development process would increase GDP to 360 billion dollars by 2025 considering it is 2.3 trillion dollars
“We did not participate in the agrarian revolution, we were not part of the industrial revolution, we were not part of the early days knowledge revolution but the ICT has been our first participation,” Ezekwesili said.
She added that Africa was not the major producer of the ideas but by consuming it, Africa already learnt how to participate in producing innovations within it.
Ezekwesili further said that women, young people joint with technology would definitely be the ones to determine the 21st century.
Also, former Minister of Information, Mr Frank Iweke Jnr, said young people aspire to have a good life.
According to him, they get education and move out of their national environment into the cities in search of greener pastures.
He said that movement of young people was creating crisis of human resources in the rural areas.
“There is need to create the right infrastructure and the right policy environment and provide leadership that can help them stay where they are and earn a decent living while contributing to home state,” Nweke said.
Also speaking, Dr Eleanor Nwadinobi, International President, Medical Women’s International Association stressed that the phrase ‘health is wealth’ is not a cliche.
The association president explained that there was an urgent need to have in Nigeria, a reversed health tourism.
According to her, no longer should leaders who are unwell leave the shores of Nigeria to seek health and well-being outside this shores only to be attended to by Nigerian doctors who probably trained in Nigeria.
“Let us make Africa rich and by the way, it is the new frontier for development, the best place to find gold is where you found it before and the gold here are the Human Resources.
“If we can train doctors and nurses here in Nigeria, let’s make the environment conducive and let’s have other professional health workers come here to study.
“A quote says ‘Encouragement is like sunlight to a closed flower’ to our young people, I will say learn to encourage one another.
“Let’s be the sunlight that encourages one another everyday, not only should we co-create, let us co-elevate,” she said.
ECOWAS representative, Dr Remi Ajibowq admonished youths saying that competence, capacity and character are three major pillars to ride on to achieve their dreams.
According to him, these three go together, your education or even Ph.D can only take you to a level but your character will see you through.
“If you look at this government of the day, they look at those who have competence, capacity and character
“I want to implore the youth, in those days it was said that the sky is your limit but you have more advantage than us,” he said
