47 youth across 15 African countries including Nigeria, in the CANVASSITY Pan African Youth Democracy Fellowship 2018 have pledged to engage and support government in a bid to foster improved governance, raise accountability and enhance citizen-government collaboration throughout Africa.
This was the outcome of a 10-day leadership and democracy workshop organized by Youngstars Development Initiative (Youngstars Foundation), a Non-Governmental Organization in Abuja with support from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) Washington DC USA.
The 10 days’ workshop which was held at the event centre of Presken Hotel and Resort Limited, Ikeja, had in attendance participants from Tanzania, Kenya, Cote d’Ivoire, Uganda, Ghana, Cameroun, Morocco, Burundi, Somaliland, Congo, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Malawi and Nigeria.
Addressing participants at the opening ceremony of the workshop, the Executive Director, Youngstars Foundation, Mr. Kingsley Bangwell, stated that a major aim of the program is to “increase youth capacity to effectively engage with and support elected representatives and government institutions to improve governance, raise accountability, efficiency and enhance citizen-government collaboration throughout Africa”.
He then urged the participants to open their minds to transformation and be ready to explore new thinking, as the leadership program is designed to empower them with the necessary knowledge, skills and mentoring needed to engage with and support governments to deliver impactful governance.
Speaking with newsmen at the closing ceremony, Bangwell revealed that participants were selected after a rigorous screening of applications from 28 African countries from which 53 participants from 17 African countries including Nigeria were selected to participate in this year’s CANVASSITY Pan African Youth Democracy Fellowship, but only 47 participants from 15 African countries made it to Lagos as participants from Namibia and Liberia could not make it.
Kingsley went further to explain that the Fellowship comprises of 2 semesters, with the 1st and 2nd semesters in Lagos and Abuja respectively as well as a one week Learning Internship at the African Union Headquarters in Ethiopia come August, 2018.
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