GYIN briefs media on forthcoming Youth Entrepreneurship Summit in Senegal

The forum is slated to take place on 29 through 31 March 2016, in Dakar, Senegal.

Mamadou Edrissa Njie, national coordinator of GYIN Gambia, also a member of the organising committee, said GYIN, International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), and Arizona State University’s EmPeace LABS project are the ones behind the summit.

Each day of the summit will focus on a specific sub-theme.The sub-theme for day one is ‘Youth innovations: reducing hunger’.On the second day, the sub-theme will be ‘Youth innovations: generating employment’ while the third and final day discussion will focus on ‘Youth innovations: building local communities’.

Mr Njie said the summit will be highly interactive as the youth will receive training from experts and will also have the opportunity to exchange ideas and best practices with their peers.

The summit targets 250 participants between the ages of 18 and 35.Participants will be selected from among those who applied and meet the YALESI criteria.The deadline for submission of application is 7 February 2016.

The GYIN national coordinator said people will be admitted for the summit in different categories.The categories are hunger fighters, entrepreneurs, community leaders, innovators, and volunteers; 50 people will be selected for each category.

In addition to the youth participants, 100 organisations will be invited as summit partners.Mr Njie explained that partner organisations will include 20 government organisations, 20 corporations, 20 international institutions, 20 universities, and 20 media organisations.

Aside from the many workshops and panel discussions as part of the summit, participants will benefit from the experience and expertise of 40 globally recognised experts as keynote speakers; 20 youth and 20 adults.

For the media coverage of the summit, 100 youth journalists, 100 youth bloggers, and 100 youth twitter experts will be join the event from all over the world.

Through the forum, Mr Njie said, GYIN seeks to develop evidence-based, sustainable, scalable, and cost-effective agribusiness entrepreneurship, and leadership programmes and policies that address the root causes of youth unemployment.It also seeks to increase opportunities for young people to have work or start a successful business.

“The goal of the summit is to build the capacity of youth to fight hunger, create jobs and develop sustainable communities in the 100 countries where GYIN operates,” GYIN national coordinator said.