Source: AllAfrica
A Non Governmental Organisation (NGO), Asiwaju Freedom League (AFL), has concluded plans to embark on massive economic empowerment for African women and youths with a view to reducing poverty to the lowest level in the continent.
The group, in a statement signed by Ayo Finnih, stressed that it had become imperative for bold and massive initiatives to be embarked upon to help African women and youths to key into the massive opportunities that abound in the continent.
The AFL is a coalition of youths from a broad spectrum of society. It is international in membership and universal in focus, as it seeks to create awareness and understanding around the political and social issues that affect the girl-child and women generally from Ghana to Nigeria.
The group, in the statement, added: "By sharing concerns, educating peer groups about the issues, articulating positions and networking with others with similar ideas, AFL intends to be a force for the good of millions of the female gender.
"A clear understanding here is that political decisions, to a large extent, determine and affect how the issues of education, gender equality, empowerment and so forth are determined. The end result will be to influence the political process."
The idea of forming the group, according the statement, came as a direct response to the multi-faceted problems facing the African continent today.
While raising an alarm over the paradox in Africa, AFL added: "For on the one hand, Africa is, in virtually every economic context, the world's last frontier. Enticing opportunities abound here.
"Within a decade, the continent could have a middle-class of about 300 million people. This presents great opportunities not just for commerce and industries looking for markets, but also as a mechanism or perhaps even a battering ram to use in the war against poverty.
"That great paradox can be resolved by turning the present dangers represented by widespread and excruciating poverty into opportunity."
Indeed, if we may digress this in itself represented the raison d?être behind former US President Bill Clinton?s sensibly thought-out Africa Growth and Opportunities Act (AGOA).