Local Works is USAID Zimbabwe’s new youth economic empowerment initiative which seeks to facilitate and support innovative, inclusive, collaborative, sustainable, scalable and locally driven solutions that enable young Zimbabweans to start and grow businesses, thereby generating employment and contributing to the country’s growth.

I recently had the pleasure of attending a co-creation workshop facilitated by the Youth Empowerment and Transformation Trust (YETT) in collaboration with USAID. The workshop sought to engage the youth of Zimbabwe (what, I am youth am I not?) towards creating a programme that will meet the desired objective.

It was good to see young people engaged in this process. It is clear to me that the young people of Zimbabwe are passionate about the issues they face and that the certainly have what it takes to create solutions to these issues. If the average age of the African continent is 18, then it is imperative that we adopt such approaches and we work to empower the youth as truth be told they are not tomorrow’s leaders but today’s and anything less is to rob future generations of their inheritance.

There is yet hope for our nation and our Africa!

Find a video explaining the Local Works program below: