The Minority Leader of Ghana’s Mock Youth Parliament has urged government to include more youth in the deliberation and participation of the ‘Ghana Beyond Aid’ agenda.

Adam Fusseni when addressing the media noted that youth involvement will help propagate the vision of government even after his tenure in office.

“Ghana Beyond Aid is not a vision for today, it is a vision for tomorrow so if you have a vision for tomorrow, make sure the owners of tomorrow, take part in the coming out of the final document that will help push us to where we want it to be,” he stated.

He added, “So if you have a situation where those championing it, those appointed for a consultation to come out with the final document are all from the New Patriotic Party [NPP] chaired by the Senior Minister, this agenda will not work.” 

Mr Fusseni said the country is making small developmental progress because politicians seek partisan interest and do not abide by national developmental plan and policies.

“Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah had a seven-year developmental plan for the country but it died with his regime because it was done by his party members. When the Busua regime came, they failed to carry out with that particular policy. Former President Mills had ‘A Better Ghana Agenda” for the country and the same can be said for him,” he narrated.

According to him, “This ‘Ghana Beyond Aid’ is something the Africa continent has accepted so looking at the experiences from the past, one would have thought that some correction will be made.”

The Youth Parliament concept is an initiative by the National Youth Authority (NYA) to provide a single formalised youth structure at the district, regional and national levels for the youth to air their frustrations, deliberate on matters of importance to youth development, and hold duty bearers accountable.

Also interacting with the media, the CEO of the NYA, Sylvester Tetteh said government will make a case for youth inclusion to the Commonwealth Heads of States in 2020.

“Every Ministry and government agencies are running youth programmes, what is the youth participating in those programmes?” he quizzed.

He stated the youth must have a stake in all programmes run by government as well as national decisions on security matters.

“We are looking at how to develop a concept paper that is uniform in all Commonwealth countries. Next year in June Heads of Commonwealth will be meeting in Rwanda to consider it,” he said.

Acting Senior Director on the Commonwealth Secretariat, Pamela McLarry called for a more creative and innovative way to tackle youth unemployment facing the continent including Ghana.

She also advised the youth to find innovative means to create opportunities for themselves and not solely rely on leaders for jobs.

“So now you need to move away from traditional ideas to think of other creative ways to get your goals to grow. And there are lots of opportunities now for that,” she said.