South Africa delegation understudy NSS scheme
The management of the National Service Scheme (NSS) is to foster collaboration with its counterpart in South Africa to share experiences on how to integrate youth support services to harness the potential of the youth.
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The initiative will facilitate an exchange programme where the prospective NSS personnel will be sent to user agencies in the opposite countries.
To strengthen that move, a five-member delegation from South Africa have visited the country to understudy the NSS, during which the two sides shared ideas on how to develop innovative modules that would address youth unemployment.
The delegation, led by a Deputy Minister at the Presidency, Mr Buti Manamela, met the top management members of the NSS, led by its Director, Dr Michael Kpessa-Whyte, at the start of the three-day tour of Accra.
Discussions between the two parties centred on youth service policies, strategic modules, challenges in implementing the policies. They also shared ideas and expertise on the best way forward.
On the first day of the tour, the team visited user agencies and project sites of the NSS to have practical experience of their operations.
Visit to Parliament
The second day of the tour took the team to Parliament House, where Dr Kpessa-Whyte and the South African team interacted with the NSS personnel at post.
The team was received by the Deputy Director of Human Resource at Parliament House, Mr Joseph Ekow Acquah, who described the NSS personnel there as dedicated and hard working.
Youth unemployment
Dr Kpessa-Whyte observed that the best way to deal with youth unemployment and other related youth issues was for countries to collaborate and adopt multi-faceted approaches across borders.
He said a comprehensive approach to addressing the concerns of the youth required modules that were integrated and development of skills that were linked to industry.
Ghana’s initiatives
Dr Kpessa-Whyte highlighted the effort the country had made to design programmes to meet the needs of the youth, mentioning specifically the Youth Employment Agency (YEA), the Youth Enterprise Support (YES) and the establishment of the National Youth Authority (NYA) to house training programmes.
The South African experience
Explaining the operation of the South African module, Mr Buti said the country was restructuring all youth service programmes into an integrated module to comprehensively address the challenges in the system.
He said the increasing number of young people who were unable to find jobs after their university education across Africa, in particular, called for a regional search for integrated and well-researched modules to deal with the challenge, rather than tackling it at the national level.