Two speakers at a workshop have advocated the depoliticisation of the legislative and institutional framework for youth development in the country. The two were of the view that the situation of youth unemployment in the country was dire and needed redress through nonpartisan measures. Mr Emmanuel Dei-Tumi and Prof. Kenneth Attafuah, the CEO of the Future Leaders Group and the Director of the William Ofori-Atta Institute of Leadership and Governance were speaking at a workshop on “Policy options for youth employment,” organised by the Institute of Continuing and Distant Education (ICDE). Mr Dei-Tumi, in his presentation warned that youth unemployment was “choking the entire nation to death,” while Prof Attafuah emphasised that “social death” of the youth had to be arrested, describing the phenomenon as the perceptions of marginalised youth, about their lives being devoid of meaningful employment and social mobility with no self confidence in themselves. Mr Dei-Tumi, whose focus was on a “National Youth Entrepreneurship Policy,” emphasised the development of young entrepreneurs in ensuring the smooth running of government programme and policies, and using best practices internationally recommended; a national youth entrepreneurship policy. The policy, he said, should foster entrepreneurship activity among the youth aimed at pre start-up, start-up and post start-up phases of the entrepreneurship process, among other recommendations. Prof. Attafuah, who focused on “the legislative framework establishing the National Service Scheme (NSS), the National Youth Authority (NYA), and the National Youth Employment Programme (NYEP) and the relevance to youth development,” said apart from the NYEP, which was a “transient, partisan job creation machine for the ruling government at any time, legislation of the NYA and the NSS had no defined modalities of co-operation and experience sharing for the youth, with the object lack of co-ordination and synergy of youth development plans and programmes. The director of the ICDE said the workshop was an innovation in following up issues raised at the institute’s annual New Year School, particularly the previous one which was on the theme: “Harnessing the power of the youth for accelerated national development.” He said the theme for the next school would be “One year of oil and gas production in Ghana, emerging issues.” Mr Abuga Pele of the YEP was present and made submissions, but there was no representative from the NSS. In his submissions, the Dean of the Faculty of Social Studies, Prof. Samuel Adjei, said it was clear from the presentations that there were huge challenges with the three-pronged institutional framework for youth development in the country and called for measures to redress them.