Nyandeng challenges youth to embrace entrepreneurship
The Vice President for Gender Cluster, Rebeca Nyangdeng has called out the vast number of South Sudanese unemployed youth and urged them to venture into entrepreneurship as a pathway to financial self-sustainability.
Addressing members of the National Dialogue Steering Committee last week, Nyandeng said this would create a prosperous economic future amid an ongoing political uncertainty that has placed thousands youth in the state of joblessness.
“Today’s youth fear the future because of our political uncertainty and unpredictability, but all of us need to tell them that the best way to predict the future is to create it now. Get involved in your local community and start a business even if you are just selling one bag of candy.
“So, I challenge the youth not to wait for their success to feel abundant. Step forward and create equality for yourself,” Nyandeng stressed.
However, most young people during International Youth Day panel discussion in August blamed the government for doing very little in empowering the youth and letting foreign nationals, including those without work permits, to solicit the scarce job opportunities in the country.
South Sudan’s youth constitutes more than 72 per cent of the population, majority of whom do not have formal job, the major cause of frustration and loss of hope that impact stability in the world and South Sudan alike.
According to the recent state of adolescent and youth report launched by the Ministry of Youth, Culture and Sports with support from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), 9 out of 10 young people aged between 15-24 did not have formal job.
The Minister of Youth, Culture and Sports, Dr. Albino Bol early this month worried this could impact the overall peace in South Sudan if the youth continue lacking employment opportunities as deterrent to hostile activities.
Nyandeng, formerly a critic of the National Dialogue, joint the initiative and called on the youth to use the platform for cultivating last peace in the country emerging from a six-year long civil war.
“Use this National Dialogue as a challenge to teach ourselves about emotional forgiveness, love of one another, and patriotism,” she further said.
