The National Youth Council of Malawi (Nycom) says the K2 billion Youth Innovation Fund which will be launched next month is the only hope for startups that are failing due to financing challenges.
Nycom executive director Rex Chapota said this when providing an update on preparations for this year’s National Youth Summit which is slated from July 2-4 at Bingu International Conference Centre in Lilongwe.
Chapota said the summit, under the theme ‘Harnessing Youth Innovation for Economic Empowerment and Sustainable Job Creation Towards Malawi 2063’, resonates with the current realities where youths with innovative ideas fail to realise their vision because of funding challenges.
“This theme is very important in the transformation journey of our nation because no single country has developed without a thriving innovation ecosystem and as we look at the priorities of the government under the Agriculture, Tourism, Mining and Manufacturing strategy, one of the themes young people have told us now and again is ‘how can we play a part as young people?’.
“One of the challenges, of course, surrounding innovations is the need for startup capital to finance various innovations. Therefore, we are happy and honoured that during the summit, we are launching the Youth Innovation Fund that is looking at supporting idea stage, growth stage and scale up stage of different innovations of young people across the country,” Chapota said.
On the actual summit, Chapota said preparations are at advanced stage as several corporate partners have confirmed supporting the holding of the conference which will be held at Bingu International Conference Centre in Lilongwe in the first week of July.
“Currently, 15 partners have confirmed their commitment to support the summit budget and indeed the confirmation from the president to grace the summit is a great encouragement to the youth agenda of this nation.
Earlier, chairperson of the organising committee of the summit under the banner Youths Decide Campaign (YDC) Mwandida Theu said they also expect to launch the National Youth Manifesto which will run from 2025 to 2030 during the summit.
“The whole idea is that stakeholders should be aware of priorities that young people across Malawi are calling for. This will also be the platform that they will get to understand the challenges that young people are currently facing,” Theu said.
According to Theu, through this national youth manifesto, governing parties will be taken to task for unfulfilled promises unlike in the past where parties adopted youths manifestos just for soliciting of votes.
In a separate interview, Patricia Mtungila of Purple Innovation, who is a member of the YDC described the summit as the platform that will clearly relay their message to stakeholders on youth priorities.
“Considering that youths constitute a great percentage of the country’s population, there is need for a collective voice of the youths and ensure that their interests are represented in decision-making,” Mtungila said.
Former National Planning Commission director general Thomas Munthali described youths as key stakeholders that should be central in both formulation and implementation of long-term policies to ensure continuity. Over 3 000 delegates, mostly youths and some policymakers, experts and foreign delegates, are expected to attend the summit whose budget is in excess of K500 million.
