The Challenges Of The Young African Leadership Initiative

As a concept, Development has been exported to third world countries uncontested. Many theories have been advanced to support the achievement of development goals such as the modernisation, structuralist, and Participatory approaches. Although these school of thoughts originated from different points in history and have polarised ideas on how development can be achieved, they all inherently accept that development is the solution to the challenges affecting third world countries. This question opens the debate about these approaches as well as raise questions about the credibility of development as a concept. Moreover, given the fact that most development interventions are being directed to the global South which has a long history of inequality …show more content…
Per the US Department of State, “this is a long-term effort to invest in the next generation of African leaders and strengthen partnerships between the United States and Africa”. Every year since 2010, about 100 young African leaders are selected through a rigorous and competitive process by US embassies across the African continent to participate in a six weeks’ leadership program in the US “in one of the three key issues 1) civic leadership 2) entrepreneurship and business 3) public management and public policy” (USAID,2016). This event has set the pace of what it entails to be a young leader in Africa and reshaped the course of community development and entrepreneurship amongst young people in the …show more content…
His emphasis on “the broad and deepening relationships between our peoples, businesses, and institutions” is ironic because the relationship between Africa and the US has always been unequal and this is reflected in the implementation of the YALI program. This so-called “partnership” is a top bottom program designed by the US government without consulting the African youths. The US State department writes that “As a result, State and USAID have designed youth policy frameworks that move youth from the periphery to the center of economic and political development” (US State Department Website). The program models both the modernization and participatory approaches because it operates on the premise that young African leaders need to learn from the US on how to promote development in Africa. It also has elements of induced participation as it puts out a call for application with incentives attracting massive response from young Africans. YALI fails to recognize that African youths have no agency when it comes to public policy and decision making in their respective countries. Without any cross-generational dialogue and exchange, how does YALI prepare these young people to participate in the decision making of their respective countries? Perhaps, if YALI had worked with young Africans to design this program, they would have realized that most of the problems in Africa