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169 Youth and Nation-Building in Cameroon Epilogue The Youth and African Renaissance: New Challenges for a Changing Continent The proclamation of 2008 by the African Union as the African Youth Year rekindled interest in the potentials and untapped energy in the continent’s young population as agents of development. In effect, Africa’s political liberation is largely owed to its youths and youth organizations. The independence generation of African leaders were in their twenties and thirties. In spite of their active participation in the early liberation struggle, youth governance in Africa has been slow largely because of the absence of an aggregated continental framework policy. Prior to the creation of the OAU, the Pan African Youth Movement (PYM) was created in Conakry in 1962 to coordinate youth activities in the continent notably by organising youth festivals, leadership training seminars, and voluntary services. With headquarters in Algiers, where it published its PYM News, the organization soon became a victim of the Cold War politics in Africa as it congresses were increasingly branded with suspicion as socialist propaganda fora. The necessity for a Pan-African forum to coordinate youth activities was highlighted in the inaugural meeting of the OAU in Addis Ababa in 1963 which recommended the creation among other things, of an African Youth Organization and an African Scouts Union alongside the ECOSOC and the African Trade Union to coordinate the continent’s mass movements. In spite of this high note, the emergence of a dynamic youth policy within the OAU between 1963 and 1995 was slow. In effect, youth activities were relegated to three organizations with observer status: the Pan African Youth Movement in Algiers, the All African Students Union (AASU) created in Accra in 1972, and the Pan Africa Youth Organization in Kampala. These organizations participated in the World Youth Festivals as well as organized continent-wide youth activities such as the Pan African Youth Festivals in Tunis in 1973 and 1993, the Pan African Youth Festival in Tripoli, and the Pan African Festival of Youth and Sports in Algiers in 1978. Youth governance within the OAU however entered a new era between 1995 and 2002 when it was transformed to the AU. Three issues helped in the growth of this trend. First in 1995, the African Youth Network (RAJ-AYN) was created within the UNECA to unite National Youth Councils and NGOs. Second, in June 1995, the OAU Council of Ministers adopted two resolutions on youth governance: Resolution CM/Res 1607 (LXII) on the Scouting Movement in Africa, in which it called on Member States to support national scouting structures; and Resolution 1608 (LXIII) on the role of the Olympic Ideal in building a peaceful world in which Member States were invited to send representations of Ministers of Youth and Sports at the 50th Session of the UN General Assembly in New York in November 1995. The year 1995 was also a watershed in global youth governance 170 Churchill Ewumbue-Monono which prompted the participation of African delegations in world youth events in Cairo, Vienna, Copenhagen, and New York, leading to the adoption of the WPAY. It is against this backdrop that the OAU organized the First African Conference on Youth and Development in Addis Ababa in March 1996 on the theme “African Youth in the 1990s and Beyond: Peace, Participation, and Development”. The OAU’s efforts were again complemented by those of the ECA which in turn organized an African Youth Forum in April 1996. The Yaoundé OAU Summit of July 1996 however gave a clear impetus to the quest for a continental youth policy. In its Resolution CM/Res 1667 (LXIV) on the Follow-Up of the First Pan African Conference on Youth and Development, the African leaders expressed their deep concern for the: “ current situation and plight of the Youth in Africa with regard to health, education, employment, drug, and crime as well as the role of the Youth in environmental protection, peace, security, democratization process and socioeconomic , political and cultural development of the continent”. The Council recommended greater partnership in addressing the continent’s youth crisis, the establishment of a Youth Fund, the convening of a Youth Conference on a biannual basis, a Youth Forum during which Creativity Awards will be given to distinguished African Youths, and the convening of the 8th Congress of the Pan African Movement.21 Between 1996 and 2002, the issue of creating a continent-wide youth policy and mechanism surfaced in the debates of transforming the OAU to...

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