'Fate of the continent is now in your hands,' African Youth urged to be part of solutions to climate change

The youth have been urged to participate in climate change initiatives in order to save the continent because the solutions to the issues facing Africa are found there.

This came after the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance and the African Coalition for Sustainable Energy and Access (ACSEA) launched the Youth for Adaptation Finance in Africa (YAF Africa) initiative.

African youth financing, which aims to unite African youth from various backgrounds, calls for a fair financing system that is tailored for the African continent.

Eugene Nforngwa, Director of Programmes, African Coalition for Sustainable Energy & Access (ACSEA), who spearheaded the official launch of YAF, claimed that by utilizing the youthful population of Africa, the initiative would foster new leadership committed to tackling the challenges posed by climate change on the continent.

“Through YAF, we will mobilize the potential of Africa’s youthful population to drive positive change on the ground and in the policy arena, we will organize campaigns, events, work shops, trainings and dialogues to educate ourselves and others about the important of adaptation finance.”

Peter Odhengo, the coordinator of the Africa Green Climate Finance Natural Designated Authorities Network (AFDAN), welcomed the launch and urged the youth to utilize the funding for youth support and get to work in order to save the African continent.

“Today ladies and gentlemen, we are very proud that we have contributed something, FLLOCA, we have contributed 300USD in that fund, DANIDA has committed 90M USD in that fund, by the end of the year, the initiative will be having 1B USD, that is a non prescriptive cheque.

“Then now it is the responsibility of youth to come up with Action plans not proposals, we have been misused and wasted time on writing proposals, youth must now take charge, the money is there.”

In particular, Sub-Saharan Africa would benefit from increased public grants for mitigation and adaptation because they would be economical and have a significant positive social impact on access to basic energy. This is highlighted in Article 34 of the Sharm el-Sheikh implementation plan.

The YFA initiative was launched on July 9,  in Ruiru-Kiambu county in Kenya.