Samuel Akinsola: shaping an interconnected world with youth influence is vital to achieve SDGs
Саммит "молодежной двадцатки" закончился 8 июня в Берлине принятием молодежного обращения к лидерам стран G20. Один из участников саммита от лица приглашенных стран поделился с нами своими впечатлениями от саммита.
Samuel Akinsola, President of the Botswana Youth Empowerment Projects:
Sequel to the initiative of having a yearly “Y20 summit” over the past few years ago where youths from the G20 economies come together to have ideas deliberation and sharing experiences together to propose possible solutions to problems that affect the development of youths around the world has been very commendable by all standards.
In the just ended “Y20” through the invitation of G20 German presidency of which I was one of the delegates, I saw a slight improvement for the first time as compared to the youth summits held in recent years because the idea to have more than the G20 youths to deliberate on how to plan the future of the world youth population is far more successful as unimaginable experiences and practical success stories was draw from each day of the summit and it helps give the G20 leaders a more clearer and precise pictures of the state of the young people in the surviving world. In as much as we want to solve global problem affecting the youths or our environment, we MUST bring in ALL segments (every local, national and continental representatives on the problem addressed) on the world stage so that each segment tells the world what ideas, problems and success stories it has and other affected segments or less affected segments can pour in to reinforce efforts to overcome the hurdles of human development in our planet.
I was very privileged to be the “Digitalization” working group with folks from Argentina, North Korea, Singapore, South Africa, Russia and Australia having totally different backgrounds and understanding of real world issues when it comes to topics like this and few other topics. I understood that the first point of working together as a group is for each individual to be open for learning, correction, appreciation and encouragement. I remember introducing myself as a dynamic young African representing Botswana and the African Union and what passion I have to start our organization(Botswana Youth Empowerment Projects) in order to empower our youths through initiatives, global collaborations and unleashing of potentials through expert leads and of course how our continental environment has not been up to the level of realizing well rounded empowered youths who can have a global influences but that as a youth organization in Botswana, we want to build a centenary legacy of youth empowerment work not only in Botswana but all over Africa and our success stories keeps encouraging us daily.
Furthermore it is in my own idea and philosophy that digitalization is a formidable tool for better development and improve knowledge Olympiad which is born out of civilization and as such we summate as Y20 delegates that in order to sharpen this very interconnected world even though we are the most tech-savvy generation, we should start having platforms and consistent cross continental frameworks for we youths to adopt groundbreaking technologies both for personal development, economic empowerment, dynamic diplomacy practices and better understanding on the value of human dignity through cultural diversities. We called on all our leaders to be very selfless, engage always with youth national bodies for capacity development and that we should have a “truly global, internationally governed and reliable internet access with transparent policies enacted on internet access keeping the security of individual as a top priority and devising concurrent methods to spot and deal with internet economy criminals without any reservation or compromise of whatsoever both from local to national, regional, continental and global sphere. On my return home together with my accompany colleague, we have started engaging our local government leaders here to look into our summation and start to play a better role than before in realizing the goal of our summit.
Moreover, it is in the power and will of our leaders to see to all the welfare that concerns youth development so that many of the world’s faced problems from the youths are gradually attended to and eliminated. We met as youths to make a solidarity to our leaders around the world that we are very responsible, ready to work with our leaders and be on the forefront in better policy implementation to resuscitate and build a more dignified generation from now which should be a legacy brought by the young people for a better world. The partnership with the African continent should be a “stand alone” item in sharpening of the interconnected world.
