The Secretary General of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Francophonie was received in audience by Hon. Hilarion Etong on 22 May 2023 to discuss youth development schemes.
In Africa and Cameroon in particular, the challenges faced by youth abound. Above every other worry, youths battle with unemployment and lack access to requisite professional training for their development. Also, women and girls still face discriminations that tend to hamper their growth in several domains. These problems and many others were at the centre of discussions between Hon. Hilarion Etong, Senior Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly also President of the Cameroon Chapter of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Francophonie (APF) and Hon. Bruno Fuchs, SG of APF.
According Bruno Fuchs, “the APF is a big family and we have old and future ties that need to be built. The aim of the meeting is to join forces with our partners of the Francophonie, to find solutions for the youths. The Francophonie has to be active and attentive and be able to respond to problems faced by youths”. As it stands, the future of the Francophonie is threatened by difficulties in mobility for the youths. Both MPs discussed how to ease movement of youths within the Francophonie because if “it’s difficult to go to France, Belgium or even Canada, the young people will go to China, Turkey, Russia and there will be no future for the Francophonie”.
It is therefore a matter of urgency for the APF together with its partners to device schemes that would tackle the growing number of issues faced by youth especially with the changing times. To Bruno Fuchs, new situations are cropping up and which are quite different from what obtained over twenty years ago and they thus have to keep up the speed by finding new solutions. One of them most definitely is helping youths in their capacities to regulate information on the several social media platforms which are just a click away.
Also present during the audience were some members of the APF – Cameroon chapter like Hon. Lydienne Epoube and Senator Obam Assam Samuel Mr. Aboullaye Daouda, Deputy Secretary General, Mr. Bouba Halidou, Permanent Secretary of APF and Mrs Roukhayatou Hamatoukour, Director of Parliamentary Affairs at the National Assembly.
Claudette CHIN
