MISPLACED EXPENDITURE.

For over a decade now, we have witnessed mushrooming of initiatives directed to boost youth and women empowerment. Vision 2030 formed the philosophy that changed the topography of youth and women involved in leadership and economic spheres.

It has been the talk of enterprises, local authorities and the government. Politicians have capitalized on the initiatives to rally a voting block behind them by using charming words that attract youth and women.

These initiatives are responsible for a lot of transformations that we are currently observing. Apart from the women representatives’ posts that is supported by the constitution, we can observe more youth and ladies in various leadership positions, with those who are exemplary having charted their way through to start their enterprises, businesses and initiatives that have changed the stories in the urban centres, villages and the ghettos.

Observing the various social media platforms, we can see youth who have made a kill and a name out of various initiatives that they were part of. The motivational speakers and the business-oriented have capitalised on the area of training youth on leadership, innovation, creativity, communication and other themes deemed necessary to the youth. Personal branding! I nearly forgot that. Thanks to them.

My concern is that the government, though the claim is that it is not enough, is setting aside a huge budget to fund a misplaced priority. Creating a budget to fund the youth and women I would call it a misplaced priority. It can never be justified by the fact that non-governmental organizations are doing it so the government is obliged to do the same. The idea that was developed by an individual to fill the gaps that were existing in supporting the youth and women, saw the government adopting it to fill the gap also.

 I would be ashamed if I was the one in charge of the policy formulation that made it a requirement for the government to fund the youth to deal with the gaps. The idea was a lesson to the government to develop a seamless system that sees the children go to school and transition comfortably to various economic activities that would see them being self-reliant. What the policy formulators devised is treating the various developmental stages as separate blocks that need different solutions. In this way, it is hard to find the correlation between what one did as a child, as a youth and as an adult.

Photo by Matheus Ferrero on Unsplash

The government is working with the pleasure principle that serves to give youth and women a temporary orgasm and by the time they wake up, they are on their own. It is well-engineered to give pleasure mostly a year to elections and after that, another circle will come after four years. It is a psychological tool that is used for individual satisfaction. Even if it is cast on stones as laws, the implementing authority, the various government regimes, would use it to achieve their objectives.

Youth and women are also very impatient. They need the results right now to please where the funds are coming from. Just as it was easy to come, so will it be easy for the cash to work away. Success is not in a one-day event that is captured in various media stations or social media outlets but it is the inertia that remains ten years after. No wonder the photography industry is making a lot of cash. People want to fool us with half baked results that only last long enough for a flash of a camera. We can not operate like this if we are focused on fixing our country for future generations.

The kind of youth and women we are also targeting these initiatives most of the times lack the required foundation for what is planted in them at their various ages. They are desperate, hungry and are itching for fame and recognition. They want to show the world and their haters on what they can be. We can not operate like that. Using tax-payers money to fund people who want to revenge on their ex, haters, failed relationships, failed marriages and wounded past. In their minds, while attending various workshops and seminars is how they would narrate the story in the social media with captions that are suggesting something. Their phone cameras are on throughout to capture those fantasies but go home just like the high school boys who are walking to the classroom a day after a captivating motivational talk. Empty.

Integrate all these factors in education. Fund education initiatives that would guarantee that learners at various stages of the education cycle received the required skills and create opportunities for them to be creative and innovative in various stages of their lives. Fund research and initiatives that makes education more responsive to the market. Initiatives that teach grit and preference. The one that teach the young to be patient and focused. The one that would make us behave for the sake of the future of our country. Make various paths of education to meaningful and enjoyable. Create job opportunities for the population and create regulations that would make acquiring loans friendly for the population.

If at all you are burning with the desire to donate money on something. Go to the villages and fund initiatives for the women who have been enslaved as housewives. The uneducated ones. The ones who work in the small-scale farms. For them, they don’t have ambitions of going to the city and they don’t have the desire to be famous on Instagram. They have a genuine concern on how they are going to ease their work at home, how they are going to cut short the journey to the river or water wells. How they are going to get a better alternative for their fuel at home. How they would help pay school fees for their kids and provide a balanced diet for them. How they would improve the condition of their homes and so forth.