Press Conference on National Youth Summit 2021: UN Resident Coordinator Babatunde A. Ahonsi's opening remarks

Minister of Information and Communication

Minister of Youth Affairs,

UN Colleagues,

Members of the media,

Ladies and gentlemen,

Good morning,

Thank you for inviting me to this press conference. I am particularly pleased about this invitation extended by the Minister of Youth Affairs to UN Sierra Leone as he introduces our partnership to boost and refocus attention on a critical component of this country’s human capital - the youth. The National Youth Summit that is planned for November aims to convene youth around the country to deliberate on issues that genuinely affect them. The discussions will be based on the four pillars of the African Union Roadmap on Harnessing the Demographic Dividend through Investments in the Youth and the Sustainable Development Goals.

The aims of the National Youth Summit, with the theme “Towards a Partnership on Youth Empowerment and Demographic Dividend” align to the Government’s Medium-Term National Development Plan (2019-2023). Similarly, these are well articulated in our United Nations Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework and by extension, the Sustainable Development Goals.

Recently, we joined the Government through the Ministry of Youth Affairs to observe International Youth Day. The theme specifically paid close attention to young people’s active participation in transforming agriculture through innovation, technology, and mechanization. This commemoration was also an effort to ensure that youth themselves transform their lives through involvement in agriculture.

Sierra Leone, in my view, has an opportunity to seize on the potential of youth. It is often said that the youth are the future. But that future is right now.  In my statement during the International Youth Day, I stressed that we should collectively, and with the help of the media, continue to strive together, leveraging the work of the Government, development partners, young people, and youth-led and youth-focused organizations, and other stakeholders to transform agriculture to achieve food security, to improve nutrition and to end hunger.

Let me use this medium to thank the Government and all my colleagues in the UN Country Team that have been working tirelessly to put together what I believe would be a successful youth engagement in November in Margburaka. Specifically, I would like to thank the Honourable Minister of Youth Affairs for championing youth issues, as exemplified in the launching of the National Youth Policy, among others. 

Also importantly, I want to implore our young people that will also be attending through virtual sessions in the regional headquarter towns to use this occasion as they discuss issues around employment and entrepreneurship, education and skills development, health, and wellbeing and, rights, governance, and youth empowerment to define a Sierra Leone that they would want not only for themselves but for the next generation. This is a moment that we should capitalise upon for building the Sierra Leone you want.

I have travelled across the country engaging with the youth, the critical mass of Sierra Leone’s population.  I do not doubt that when they are given the same platform and provided with the right impetus to articulate issues, they will develop clear and well-defined goals for themselves. And the youth are key to the country’s ambitious drive to achieve the SDGs by 2030 and become a middle-income country by 2035. The UN will continue to support and complement the Government and other partners’ efforts in this national quest.

Let me step back a bit and allow my colleagues and the Hon. Minister to reflect on the plans that will be shared with you momentarily. Thank you very much, and I call on the media to partner with us as we engage in discourse around the youth of Sierra Leone.