International Youth Day celebrations: A challenge to the Youth

By Alliance for National Transformation

August 12, 2021

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Since 1999, every year on the 12th August, countries across the world, under the auspices of the United Nations celebrate International Youth Day. This is out of the recognition that the world has grown younger, and that the future of the planet lies in harnessing youth power. The theme for 2021 is “Transforming Food Systems: Youth Innovation for Human and Planetary Health.”
Within me is a strong urge to condemn government and list the things governments should do to support youth and enable them take their meaningful place. For once however, I want to point the finger at the youth themselves. Uganda’s food systems, just like almost everything else is still largely traditional – and backward, with all the attendant problems. Think among others – rudimentary tools and methods of production, subsistence production, low yields, and environmentally hazardous farming methods.

These are all challenges, and whereas the easiest path is to look for whom to blame, I would like to take another turn today and say whereas the status quo is challenging, it also presents a huge opportunity for young people to make a difference. A young person born in a Scandinavian country may not have much to do. A young person born in Uganda (Africa) however, has the opportunity of almost everything being – un-done. You can literally pick any sector in this country and cause a revolution, thereby becoming a hero. The question is, do the young people have the requisite ambition, work ethic and values of sacrifice, courage, hard work, teamwork, and discipline to pull this off?

Frantz fanon Omar was right, “Every generation MUST, out of relative obscurity, identify its historical mission, and either fulfill it or betray it.” It is worth probing what the historical mission of Uganda’s youthful population is.

 The theme for this year’s international youth day celebrations is on food systems and I would like to propose a historical mission in that line, which I feel warrants a generational protracted struggle. The most important impeding battle in my view, besides of course fixing our governance issues is that of social economic transformation. The lowest hanging fruit being through food systems as highlighted in the theme. Whether you want to call it employment, wealth creation, jobs, boosting the economy, enhancing production, raising household income, the bottom line is there is need for us to war against poverty, against traditional food systems, against the exploitation of farmers by middlemen, peasantry and generally backward means and modes of production.

The question is, how organized are we? Are we ready to pay the ultimate price? Are we disciplined, sacrificial, united, and altruistic to approach this like the war it is? We need answers to those questions because the truth is, this war calls for as much concerted efforts as one would for an actual war or perhaps even more.

Here is my proposal to the youth.

Initiate or join the struggle for good governance through platforms like the Alliance for National Transformation (ANT).

Critically study and analyze the challenges we have at hand, their nature, and what is supposed to be done.

Organize yourselves in groups to engage in meaningful mobilization, and organization or production entering the different levels of the value chains of different sectors including agriculture. In organizing these, remember the attitude is for a battle that is a matter of life and death. Therefore, the discipline, the bravery, the patience that soldiers exhibit is indispensable.

Many are bogged down by lack of startup capital, negative attitudes, poor planning, and lack of market for their products. Therefore, in this war, helping them to source and access funds from not only government, but also programs of development partners and other self-help sources is as important as skilling them, and offering training on how they can collectively solve issues of market for the products, and technical knowledge becomes a silver bullet.

As the plans are made and the execution focused, paralysis by analysis, where we simply keep talking about ideas and values but never implementing them, is thus avoided. Lead by example and engage meaningfully, let others learn from you. So I ask, will you do something or keep lamenting?

“Start where you are with what you have!”

Matanda Abubaker,

N.C – Youth, ANT.