Green economy, $100b climate pledge offer hope for youth employment

•Global community charged to redeem funding pledge to Africa
Stakeholders at Green Growth Africa, yesterday, said that a multi-billion-dollar climate and sustainable economy as well as over $100 billion pledge to Africa could leapfrog the green economy, develop skills for young Africans, reduce rising poverty and unemployment.

Coming ahead of International Youth Day, which is marked globally, tomorrow, the pan-African green growth advocacy group, insisted that the rising share of youth unemployment in Africa remained unacceptable.

At a virtual press conference monitored by The Guardian in Abuja, Executive Director of the Organisation, Dr. Adedoyin Adeleke, said Africa remained the only continent in the world where more than 60 per cent of its population are under the age of 25; and by 2030, nearly half of the world’s youth population would be from Africa.

Decrying the many impacts of climate change on the economy, environment and youths across the continent, Adeleke insisted that the continent with a dismal contribution to climate issues requires solutions that also address pressing socio-economic needs.

With the economies of most African countries dependent on fossil fuel, Adeleke said Africa needs innovative climate solutions that enable the continent to be more resilient to climate disasters while maximising the economic benefits of the global green transition.

With the transition to net-zero spurring an economy estimated at $10.3 trillion, Adeleke said the development presents a new economic opportunity ranging from the growing market demand for electric vehicles, renewable power generation, clean energy equipment, renewable fuels, as well as green finance and activities that would support supply chains across the globe.

According to him, empowering youths in Africa to drive these economies instead of being mere spectators and consumers of clean energy remained sacrosanct.

He canvassed for homegrown industries that would convert the continent’s enormous rich mineral reserves of Lithium to make batteries that power electric vehicles instead of setting up industries elsewhere and exploring the minerals from Africa.

“This highlights the critical theme of the 2023 International Youth Day, “Green Skills for Youth: Towards a Sustainable World.” Africa needs to aggressively arm its youth with Green Skills to leverage their enthusiasm, resilience, and exploratory spirit.

“This is the pathway to develop new medium and large green industries in Africa. We must emphasise here that Africa cannot afford to depend on other nations for green technologies. We must develop here in the soil of Africa globally competitive green technologies if climate action must yield social and economic gain on the continent,” Adeleke said.

Adeleke called on the developed nations to redeem their $100 billion pledge for the Climate Fund agreed upon in COP21, financial pledges made to the Adaptation Fund in COP26, and the recent loss and damage fund agreed to at COP27.

The Executive Director also asked African policymakers to find innovative ways to connect public, private, and concessional finance, necessitating collaboration between donors, private investors, development finance institutions, MDBs, and international financial organisations.

According to him, the funds should be mobilized for multidimensional and multi-sectoral strategic interventions for green growth.

Noting that decarbonisation is not counter development, Adeleke said climate change does only offer crisis but also offer critical and multidimensional opportunities.

To him, Africa needs to leverage the high demographic, enthusiasm, resilience, and exploratory spirit of the African youth to harness and exploit these climate opportunities, adding that harnessing the opportunities requires that the youth be armed with green skills and action competencies to leverage their creativity to innovate and chart new courses for climate action that does not only reduce carbon emissions but also advance social and economic capital

“African educational systems require major overhaul with the new development thinking to develop new courses and programmes that will prepare the youth to be game changers in the fight against climate change in ways that present social and economic advantage to Africa. In this light, new unconventional training institutes need to be established to meet new unconventional capacity-building needs.

“Government, Private sector, multilateral, international and development organisations including civil society to work individually and together to mobilise financial resources towards green skills for the youth,” Adeleke said.

Manager, Operations, Juwonlo Micheal at the non-governmental organisation said Green Growth Africa has empowered more than 5,000 youths in 26 African countries with green innovation and technologies.