Liberia: Powerful Youth Demographic Dividends Not to Be Taken for Granted

Recent presidential election in Liberia confirms the powerful role of youth, particularly in post conflict democratization. The youth remain critical stakeholders in Statebuilding and Peacebuilding and it would be naive to think that decades of rhetorics, manipulations and systematic lack of commitments by out- going and previous governments in addressing critical issues confronting the youths could go free. Indeed, the youths are 'powerful in number but vulnerable by position' yet capable of engendering change.

Liberia is extremely endowed with enormous resources with a high proportion of youths that can be harnessed to exploit the resources and drive the country's development. But successive leaders in Liberia do not prioritize activities that are capable of training, preparing and transforming youths to become productive. Services that are supposed to improve the well-being of youths are not given adequate national priority. Example, in the 2016/2017 budget (US$555.9 million), social services received relatively better chuck compared to previous years with health getting US$ 77million while US$83 million was allocated to education. However the recent go slow by teachers at MVTC, one of Liberia's biggest vocational training centers, which is providing professional technical services to help transform some of our vulnerable youths to become productive citizens, shows that these allocations are made but are eventually not utilized for the intended beneficiaries resulting to low human capital in the citizens with attendant low productivity.

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