Speech on Monitoring and Evaluation on Youth Policies in Baku

Talking Notes for presentation by Ahmed Adamu, Chairperson, Commonwealth Youth Council, at the Global Forum on YouthPolicies, Baku, Azerbaijan.

-National Youth Policies are incumbent ingredients for youth empowerments. It allows for effective mainstreaming of youth across all the socio economic issues.
-National Youth Policies should not be an option to any progressive government. young people should engage in advocacy to ensure full implementation of the domains of these policies.
-More than 90% of Commonwealth Countries have National Youth Policies, but only 30% of these countries effectively implement them.
-absence or poor Monitoring and evaluation (M&E) mechanisms is one of the causes of poor implementation of the youth policies. Youth policies are like cars, and M&E is is the fuel to drive those car.
-There are two approaches to M&E: one is cooperational and the other is confrontational.
-co-operational approach involves advising and lobbying. This can be through formal/informal meetings, policy discussions and debates.
-Confrontational involves advocacy and activism, which is through pressurising the government, protest, media campaigns, international involvements etc
- The choice of approach depends on circumstances in a country. However, on a general perspective, the cooperational approach should be the first option before considering the confrontational option.
- M&E can only be effective with sufficient indicators, which include indices, statistics or data, which help to track progress or otherwise in terms of youth development
- these data has to be disaggregated and country specific.
-For us to influence policy, we have to have evidence, and these evidence comes from statistics/data.
-who is responsible for M&E? National Youth Council should be supported to do the M&E. Other stakeholders, civil society organisations, youth led organisations have to come to a single platform to do the M&E.
-Commonwealth Youth Council is about to conduct capacity building programmes for National Youth Councils on M&E of youth policies.
-Government have to be accountable to youth policies. There should be an annual youth development evaluations and reports? Where government reports to youths on what it has done in line with implementations of the policy denominators.
-There has to be reward and consequences for implementing and not implementing National Youth policies respectively both locally and internationally.
-Commonwealth Youth Council strongly advocates for stand alone goal for young people in the post 2015 development goals, and this goal will strongly help to ensure proper implementation of youth policies at all levels and to ensure proper inclusion and participation of young people in development and governance.
-National Youth Policies domains has to be reviewed and updated frequently.
- Finally, for all youth policies to work, it has to have 5Cs as mentioned by Prof Howard. Youth Policies have to have clear coverage, capacities, co-ordination, cost as well as clear M&E and implementation plans.
- For National Youth Policies to work, It has to be legislated or pass as a law.
Thank you.

International Toilet Day

By Dr. Ahmed Adamu

Out of 7 billion people in the world, 3.6 billion of them (51%) either defecate in the open or do not have access to sanitary toilets. There are 30 countries in the world where two third of their population do not have access to sanitary toilets, 20 of these are from Africa. In Eretria and Chad, only 9% of their people have access to sanitary toilets, in Ethiopia the accessibility is 13%.

Access to water and sanitation is one of the human rights that everyone should have, it ...is not a privilege. Today (19/11/14) is the World Toilet day, and it is the day to raise awareness and take action to improve access to sanitary toilets. Many young women in the Commonwealth and beyond fall into the risk of rape and violence due to absence of toilets that offer privacy. Many of them go out of school due to lack of sanitation.

This challenge, affect the health environment of billions. One gram of “shit”(poop) carries 50 communicable diseases, 1000 parasites cysts, 1 million bacteria, 100 worm eggs and 10 million virus. Without proper sanitation especially from children, diseases can spread widely causing Diarrhea. Diarrhea kills 4,000 children every day, it kills more people than HIV/AIDS, and Tuberculosis put together, it kills more people than any ongoing wars around the world, and it is all as a result of poor sanitation or poor toilet system.

The discovery of flush toilets is the best medical advances, better than the discovery of pills, anaesthesia and surgery (British medical journal). Many countries spend more money on military and defence than on providing sanitary toilets, and yet more people die from poor sanitation.

Have you ever seen a government budget that says these funds will be spent to build or upgrade toilets either in public places, schools or homes? If you do, how much?, and how effective? . The level of poverty in some countries, may not allow some people to provide the required sanitation system, it is therefore the responsibility of government and all of us to contribute and set up a fund in every community to build sanitary toilets in schools, markets and public places, and in households.

If “shit” is to be stored safely, it can be of a benefit, it can cook your lunch. If you lock a poop at a certain temperature, and then open it later, you can generate high level of nutrients, which can be used as a gas, and this can help stop deforestation, and the source of the supply of this nutrient will be infinite.

Let us all speak today, remonstrate and raise awareness to ensure the toilet per capita is improved. An average sanitary toilet shall not be used by more than 5 people.

Happy International Toilet Day.

Prioritization of Government investment: Katsina State

By Dr. Ahmed Adamu

According to reports, the recently built government house and stadium in Katsina cost around 7 billion Naira, equivalent to 438 million US dollars. This money would have been enough to generate averagely around 7,300,000MWh using onshore wind plant, or 1,564,286MWh using Solar PV, or 3,650,000MWh using Hydro, or 6,257,143MWh using combined gas turbine and coal plant.(source:USDOE). According to World Bank development indicator, the whole Nigeria consumed 24,453,000MWh in 2011, dividing this by 37 states (including Abuja), you will get 660,891MWh per state. I know you will say the share of electricity consumption of these states are not proportionate, but let us go with the highest possible share for Katsina state. This means that the money spent in building the new government house and stadium can generate around 26% of what Nigeria consumed in 2011, and can generate 947% of what Katsina itself consumed in the same year (using gas turbine as a benchmark). Therefore, if these funds were invested to generate electricity, it would have given Katsina state more than nine times of what it consumed of electricity in 2011, with even an extra to help the industrious city of Kano.

Now, what if every state would contribute the said 7 billion Naira to power sector, what level of power generation can Nigeria have? You can do the maths yourself by now. The above calculations is based on US information(and there could be practical issues), but that would not be far different from what could be obtained elsewhere.

Becoming top 20 economies in the world cannot be possible without stable electricity. The impact of power supply can never be exaggerated. Yet, some governments spend billions of money for unnecessary projects. According to myself in a paper I presented at World Conference on Youth earlier this year, “Good Governance is when people’s interest and opinion direct the decision and commitment of a government, when government’s priority is to serve, protect and fulfil the desires of its people.”