Earlier in the year I was leading the development of the African Union's 10 year plan of action for youth development in Africa. The document is being put together as an implementation plan for the African Youth Charter, which entered into force in August 2009, and will serve as programme of action for the decade on youth development in Africa, declared by African heads of state in January 2009 and will last until 2018. During the writing workshop for the plan, we encountered and extensively discussed the question, what is youth development?
My own take is that youth development is both a phase (as in developmental psychology) and a process (as in development policy). The phase lasts throughout the period of adolescence up until ages 18-20. The process covers the entire span of adolescence to early adulthood, a concept some writers describe as late adolescence. I am recently confronting this problem again. The phase describes the period and process of growing-up, while the process involves the programmes and strategies put in place to address the challenges of growing-up. All in all youth development (the process) is intended to empower young people for sustainable livelihoods and to be responsible citizens of their countries. However, with the exception of positive youth development (which has its origins in biology and psychology), a major part of the literature relies on the human rights approach, the human capital approach and the the capabilities/ human development approach. The human rights approach remains the most popularly used but it is sometimes not applied correctly. In failing to apply the human rights and human capital approaches correctly, many of the efforts towards youth development and empowerment have been normative and lack empirical support.
For example, it is the right of the young person to participate in policy discourse around education, HIV/AIDS/ sexual health or ICT because they are a critical constituency, affected by the issues, and they can bring innovation to the policy table. But where is the evidence to support this hypothesis? Where is the evidence to show that youth participation will actually lead to policy changes? If anything, youth participation can be construed as a learning/ capacity building opportunity or process - some experts will argue. Therefore, the different approaches to development must show where and how to situate youth. When constructing a youth development index, one needs to understand clearly what the theoretical basis is and how to apply the theory to the development of indicators. Perhaps the theoretical basis for the human development reports will guide everyone in this regard.
In going forward, there is a need to evolve a model/theory/ approach that provides the basis for youth development, empowerment and participation. As a first step, a study of what the sectoral youth ministries are doing needs to be undertaken, as a means to establish what types of policies are being implemented to develop and empower the youth, and this should lead to further work in the area of policy. Although no one theory fits all situations, a youth development theory should be comprehensive enough to address youth challenges, capabilities and rights of the youth. Personally, this is an issue of strong interest to me and during the coming year, I will try to engage myself in providing some answers so as to facilitate an understanding of youth and what needs to be done to solve their problems, enhance their skills and ensure that their innovativeness is fully beneficial to their respective societies.
A very merry Christmas to you!
Posted at: 06:17 PM | Add Comment
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