The Country Director of Fludor Ghana, a subsidiary of TGI Group, Dennis Sampong, said young Africans must take a leading role in shaping the continent’s future, with stronger participation in agriculture and innovation.

Sampong made the call at the fifth edition of the Yale Model African Union Conference, which was held in Accra, bringing together over 300 delegates, policymakers, industry leaders and entrepreneurs from across Africa and the diaspora for a three-day dialogue and collaboration.

The conference, themed ‘Imagine, Challenge and Build the Africa We Want’, marked five years of promoting youth leadership and policy engagement. It featured African Union committee simulations, leadership workshops, the Mandate-to-Market Innovation Pitch Contest and a university and career fair.

Speaking during a panel on ‘Designing the Future: Creativity at the Intersection of Policy and Enterprise’, Sampong stressed the need to align youth inclusion with Africa’s development priorities, particularly in agriculture.

He said: “The future of Africa is the youth. If you look at Ghana, more than 60 per cent of the population is under 35. Everything we are doing now will shape the future of youth. Nobody can do better for Africa than Africans.”

He warned that Ghana’s cocoa sector faced an ageing workforce, noting that the average farmer is between 55 and 60 years.

He called for urgent efforts to attract young people into the industry through innovation and technology.

“If our farmers used to use cutlasses and hoes to do cocoa, what other technologies can we bring in? As part of our training programmes, we encourage young people to go into cocoa and use modern ways of going about their farming activities,” he said.

Other panellists highlighted the need for stronger collaboration between policymakers, entrepreneurs and the private sector to turn policy ideas into practical and scalable solutions.