By Alagie Manneh
Real estate tycoon and philanthropist, Mustapha Njie, has called for the building of robust institutions in Africa that strategically position youth to contribute to the development needs of the continent.
He was speaking on the latest episode of The Sisters Show on the topic ‘Building Africa’ and ‘importance of building institutions’.
He enunciated: “My foundation is basically about empowering the youth.It’s the youth that are the leaders.We keep on saying youth are the future leaders, but actually you,the youth, are the leaders.
My team is very young.The average age of my workers is 29 years old.72% of my management team is female.You can imagine and it works.
We need to identify at a very early age the kind of kids we want to fill up society in the future.Let us stop getting our kids into structured ways of picking up educational schools.We need to redefine what education means and the purpose of education.We need to make sure we have strong institutions and people should stop personalizing their positions.They are serving within an institution”.
The CEO of Taf Africa Global who pledged to build one million homes in ten years reiterated his faith in youth and the substantial role they play in Africa’s developmental pivot.
Olay Ceesay, a host on the show and vice president of a Fortune 500 company in the US, chimed in that it is important for young people to be empowered and ‘instilled with confidence at an early age’ that they can be drivers of innovation and development.
The successes registered by Taf Africa Global in The Gambia and Nigeria with world class houses, she added, are ample evidence dreams backed by action and persistence can be achieved.
