• FAMILY Health International 360 (FHI 360) Chairperson Albert Siemens (3rd from left), speaks when he met Zambia’s High Commissioner to South Africa, Muyeba Chikonde (l) at the Mission in Pretoria. FHI 360 regional director for East and Central Africa, Otto Chabikuli (2nd left), board member Robert Price (2nd right) and director of enterprise services for East and Southern Africa, Kellock Hazemba listen. (See story on Page 2). PICTURE By NICKY SHABOLYO
By JACK MWEWA –
FAMILY Health International 360 (FHI 360) has announced plans to work with the Zambian Government to tackle youth unemployment in the country.
The announcement was made by FHI 360 Chairperson Albert Siemens in Pretoria, South Africa last Thursday through a statement by Zambia press secretary Nicky Shabolyo.
Dr Siemens said his organisation realised that the Zambian Government alone could not resolve youth unemployment but that FHI 360 was ready to help through cooperating with the private sector and the civil society.
He said youth unemployment had become a big issue affecting most countries around the world due to expanding populations.
He said FHI 360 believed it could help by finding ways of creating opportunities in the private sector for skilled youths.
“We believe we need to help so that the Government does not carry the burden alone. We are thinking of many ways of how we can develop those opportunities in addition to our traditional HIV/AIDS intervention programmes,” he said.
Dr Siemens was speaking when he led FHI 360 board members in paying a courtesy call on Zambia’s High Commissioner to South Africa Muyeba Chikonde in Pretoria.
Other members of the team included board member Robert Price, and director of enterprise services for East and Southern Africa Kellock Hazemba.
The FHI 360 board has split into smaller groups and gone on missions to visiting their projects in different countries before they re-group in Livingstone next week for a board meeting.
The board travels out to countries where they have projects once every three years after which they select one of the countries as venue for their board meeting for that particular year.
FHI 360 regional director for East and Central Africa Otto Chabikuli said youth unemployment had become a huge regional problem which needed all stakeholders to start thinking of intervention measures.
Dr Chabikuli said his organisation was already planning to create internships and entrepreneurship-type of training for the youths and devise ways of ensuring that all those undergoing such programmes were absorbed in local economies.
He urged the Zambian Government to facilitate partnerships among Government, the private sector and non-governmental organisations in trying to resolve the problem.
Mr Chikonde pointed out that Zambian Government’s approach was to be innovative by allowing communities to drive the development agenda.
He noted that even President Michael Sata has been emphatic in urging line Ministries to be innovative and avoid repeating procedures that may not have benefited the people in the past.
He said Ministries were being called upon to critically analyse and institutionalise survival strategies for the people as a way of making them sustainable.
Mr Chikonde said Government’s role was to facilitate entrepreneurship in the development of the private sector and that was the reason huge amounts of resources have been directed to infrastructure development in order to contribute to creating a conducive environment for private sector participation.
He cited FHI 360 as one of Zambia’s strongest partners as it had made tremendous contributions to the health sector in improving health systems, infrastructure, equipment and manpower.
