Ghana to host Child and Youth Finance Regional Meeting for Africa
The Micro Finance and Small Loans Centre (MASLOC) and Youth Enterprise Support Initiative (YES), both under the Office of the President of the Republic of Ghana, will co-host the fourth Child and Youth Finance Regional Meeting for Africa in collaboration with Child and Youth Finance International (CYFI) based in Amsterdam.
Advertisement
The meeting, scheduled to take place in Accra from November, 23-25, 2015, has the theme: “Advancing youth economic empowerment for inclusive growth.”
The regional meeting is an annual gathering of Africa’s leading experts, policy makers, business leaders, researchers, educators, young entrepreneurs and financial services providers.
Participants from Ghana and other sub-Saharan African countries will be drawn from central banks, Ministries of Education and Finance, commercial banks, microfinance institutions, research and academic institutions, multi-lateral institutions and civil society organisations.
The meeting aims at defining critical issues inhibiting the socio-economic empowerment of young people and also identifying innovative practices in addressing youth financial exclusion, unemployment and financial illiteracy.
The CYFI Secretariat collaborates with an African country each year to convene the Child and Youth Finance Regional Meeting for Africa. Nigeria, Zambia and Ethiopia have hosted the event in the past.
Objectives of the meeting
The overall objective of the regional meeting is to bring together relevant stakeholders in child and youth finance to examine the current state of child and youth finance in Africa and explore innovative ways to enhance child and youth finance, gender inclusion for growth, financial literacy and youth entrepreneurship skills development.
The meeting wil, therefore, provide an overview of the current state of financial inclusion and education for children and youth in Africa, identify challenges and key policy changes needed to better facilitate same and share best practices and innovations in the area, including economic citizenship education (ECE) and youth entrepreneurship development.
It will also explore the establishment of multi-sectorial national and regional platforms that will create concrete action plans for greater financial inclusion and education for children and the youth in the region, and provide training and skills enhancement for practitioners.
Youth session
A key activity of the meeting will be a session where youth and young entrepreneurs would participate in workshops that will address issues such as entrepreneurship skills development, microenterprise development and financial literacy.
The youth will come out with a communique which would be incorporated into the outcome of the meeting.
Conference launch
At a ceremony held in Accra to launch the upcoming conference, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Micro Finance and Small Loans Centre (MASLOC), Ms Sedina Tamakloe Attionu, said that financial inclusion remained a key enabler to reducing poverty and boosting prosperity among the people.
She said MASLOC recognises the importance of financial inclusion and had therefore been actively involved in the activities of the Child and Youth Finance at the regional level over the years.
In a speech read on her behalf, the Deputy Minister of Finance, Ms Mona Helena Quartey, said the government recognised that financial access, inclusion and literacy were pillars for economic growth and development.
She said in that regard, the government had identified youth financial inclusion as one of the high points in its accelerated transformation agenda.
She gave the assurance that the government would take steps to ensure that factors that inhibited financial flow to the poor and the vulnerable in the society were removed.
The Chief Executive Officer of the Youth Enterprise Support (YES), Mrs Helga Boadi, said young people should be encouraged to cultivate the habit of saving.
Mrs Boadi said experience over the years had shown that young persons who were financially active through savings were able to positively impact their lives.