Fatty Al Ansar ,
Please provide us with your views on the state of youth (un)employment in your country, and how it affects your country's state of peace
According to the World Bank statistics, 40 percent of the Malian population is currently aged between 15 to 40 years. Youth unemployment rates are extremely high and keep increasing especially in rural areas. Young people and women are a significant number of the Malian population and are the key actors in the creation of a peaceful Mali. In the times of conflict and instability young people and women are the most vulnerable ones but are also the key solution to bring peace.
Addressing youth unemployment has become increasingly urgent in the face of a deteriorating security situation, where criminal and radical groups have penetrated many parts of Mali. Young people lack any other choice aside from joining armed groups, where they are offered a better life in return for creating chaos. If Mali wants to reach a long-lasting peace, Mali needs to start investing in youth employment, creating jobs, supporting youth enterprises and investing in education in order to fight extreme poverty.
How does your work and/or activism promote youth employment and/or sustainable peace?
In 2012, I launched my organization Tilwalte in Mali. It aims at educating, developing and connecting young Malian girls to a brighter future. This summer my organization launched the Girls Peace Network where we brought young girls from all ten regions of Mali for two weeks of intensive training in peace building, leadership and entrepreneurship.
Those young girls are now back in their communities working on peace building through community based projects. At the end of our training, we provided our girls with mobile cell phones to allow them to collaborate on different projects and create an online platform of support.
I am currently working on launching my new initiative called African Women Access Lab. The main aim of which is to empower African women through Entrepreneurship. This new initiative will support female entrepreneurship in Mali through capability building trainings, linking and learning tools and provide all possible resources and platforms to support in launch of their enterprises.