Pinehas Nakaziko
Windhoek-The former University of Namibia (Unam) Student Representative Council (SRC) president, Joseph Kalimbwe, will be taking part in a youth dialogue, ‘When Will Africa Arrive In The 21 Century’, to be live streamed on YouTube next Wednesday.
Kalimbwe will be joined by other two former student leaders, Sam Were from Kenyatta University in Nairobi, Kenya, and Bakotelo Mmip from the University of Botswana in Gaborone. Kalimbwe says the main purpose of the dialogue is to debate and engage on issues that have affected Africans across the continent, and mainly the reasons why the continent still lags behind in the 21st century, in terms of youth empowerment, employment and a strong education.
“Our continent has struggled to live to up the promise of a better life for everyone under its roof. And all the way up to the time South Sudan recently became the 54th African country on the continent in 2011, we seem to have had our glory days behind us, 17 years into this new century,” Kalimbwe remarks.
He adds that the dialogue is not only centred on what Africa has suffered.
“Many countries have long begun to visualise their place in a 21st century world, but Africa seems to not have yet gotten into the century. We still cannot point out more than five countries on our continent that have their own automobile industries, or even getting to have an edge in the technology industry.”
Kalimbwe adds that the debate on whether Africa is yet to arrive in the 21st century seems a long overdue one, but Africa can only have itself to blame if the statistics released by international organisations do not look favourable.