JOHANNESBURG: Lauding the “resilience” of Africa’s unemployed youth, Prince Harry on Wednesday pledged £8 million to support skills training for South African youngsters facing a daunting, jobless future.
“Africa needs to create 20 million jobs by 2035, and while youth unemployment is a global challenge, it’s particularly a problem here where nearly 57 per cent of young people are unemployed,” the prince said.
“Yet I have seen strength, resilience, a sense of hope and empathy that I can only aspire to replicate,” he said.
South Africa’s unemployment hovers at over 27 per cent — soaring to over 50 per cent among young people.On the last day of their African tour, the Duke and the Duchess of Sussex visited the Youth Employment Services (YES) centre in the Johannesburg township of Tembisa, touring various entrepreneurial and skills programmes hosted at the hub.
The duke announced Britain would provide £8 million towards a “skills for prosperity” programme to facilitate training of young people in “urgently” needed skills, much to the jubilation of the audience. The crowd — mainly young people from the township — and the prince chanted YES at each other in celebration.
The YES initiative, launched in April 2018, seeks to spur job opportunities for the young through entrepreneurship.
At the YES hub, the royal couple toured facilities where local youth are equipped with financial, literacy and computer skills and a female empowerment programme that produces up to 80,000 compostable sanitary towels per month, which are sold at low prices to the local community.
Prince Harry added that starting adult life without a job could start a cycle of poverty that can be difficult to escape. “But you guys are producing solutions, and for that, we commend you.” “You are the change makers, you are helping to grow your country’s prosperity by lifting those around you and offering a better future,” he said, to cheers.
He made no reference to a lawsuit the couple has filed against a British tabloid newspaper that cast a shadow over the end of their trip.
But striking a personal note, he said visiting Africa from boyhood had helped him come to terms with the death of his mother Princess Diana, who died in a car crash in Paris in 1997 at the age of 36.
“Ever since I came to this continent as a young boy, trying to cope with something I can never possibly describe, Africa has held me in an embrace that I will never forget, and I feel fortunate for that,” he said.
“I always feel — wherever I am on this continent — that the community around me provides a life that is enriching, and is rooted in the simplest things — connection, connections with others and the natural environment. — Reuters
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