Interview with Ilias Sawadogo, Youth Focal Point at the Embassy of the Netherlands in Burkina Faso
Youth at Heart is all over the world, both within the work of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and beyond. This interview series gives a spotlight to relevant youth leaders across the world. What are their experiences, their recent thoughts, and their future plans?
The third interview in this series is with Ilias Sawadogo, our Youth Focal Point at our embassy in Burkina Faso. Ilias has been active for quite some time in the youth space, amongst others as project assistant to the office of the UN Secretary-General's Envoy for Youth.
Can you tell a little bit about yourself and your background?
I am currently working at the Embassy of the Netherlands in Burkina Faso. A large part of my portfolio regards the political and professional inclusion of youth. Overall, youth is seen as an important actor in the realm of development, especially in relation to peacebuilding.
In our country, the fact that the median age is only 18 years old, with around 64% of the population under 25 years of age, is both a challenge as a strength. In and of itself, this already shows why it’s important to focus on youth within our programming. The Africa strategy of the Netherlands also underpins the importance to invest in the continents young, self-assured, and connected population, meaning that we aim to let our programs revolve around youth.
The security context in Burkina is hectic at the moment. Political instability and terrorist threats result in the fact that security is one of our main priorities at this point in time. It should be noted that, unfortunately, young people are both victims and actors in relation to this instability, mostly because they are mobilized by those violent extremism groups. This is, of course, detrimental for youth and their communities, but in a context where there are little alternatives it becomes increasingly appealing.
For these reasons, it’s important to invest in youth as drivers for development. If we understand the reason why some youth disconnect form wider society, we could try to prevent certain individuals to join violent extremism groups.
Generally, I think two main factors contribute to youth exclusion. Firstly, the limited access of youth to economic opportunities: they simply do not stand a fair chance in the current environment. The second one relates to the difficult access to governance structures, which is the traditional path to a stable job. And, unfortunately, initiatives on facilitating economic opportunities for youth as a vector for development remain limited.
So what about the exclusion from economic life?
Low job creation rates and a limited entrepreneurial culture hinders the access to decent jobs. Almost half of youth population (45.7%) is neither in employment nor in an education and training program. The number of formal jobs created per year is around 20,000, while each year more than 250,000 young persons aged 15-24 enter the labor market́. Also, 80.1% of young people working on their own activities in rural areas earn a monthly income of less than the minimum wage (CFAF 45,000). In other words, the majority of jobs held by young people are insecure.
This situation makes youth particularly vulnerable and susceptible to getting involved with violent extremist groups. One of the ways to counter this is through offering youth viable alternatives and nourishing their itch for education and formation.
Transforming and supporting the education and the entrepreneurship ecosystem in Burkina Faso is also one of the focus areas of the embassy, particularly through a skills-oriented approach. As such, we aim to respond to the needs of the students and rural youth, and build on the avenues where their energy naturally goes to. This overarching systematic approach finds its expression, amongst others, in the program ‘Carrefour des Opportunités’.
Could you explain a little bit more Carrefour des Opportunités?
This initiative, funded by the Netherlands, facilitates access to digital technologies, amongst others through the 50 in-person hubs that are spread across the country. Through technology and the physical hubs, the program offers employment readiness training, provides entrepreneurship incubation, expands basic financial services, and offers health and nutrition coaching. The combination of in-person hubs and spreading of digital technologies enables the program to reach even the most vulnerable youth.
The physical centers – or, youth hubs – are a place to come together. Simultaneously, they’re also some sort of a safe space for youth. Here, youth can explore their ideas and their thoughts on creating economic opportunities for themselves and their communities. Different activities and events contribute to further explore and develop their initial ideas.
Additionally, the activities in the centers are designed in a way that all the needs of individual young persons are met – which is for example particularly relevant in relation to youth with a disability. Youth is encouraged to bring their own ideas, both if there is already a well-thought out plan or no plan at all. The centers then helps young persons to build their own business models, building on the ideas they initially came in with.
Hence, the hubs have a big facilitative function, but eventually the idea is that youth is empowered to continue their businesses without the help of the hubs. Focusing on the ideas of youth itself, and supporting them as such, result in more sustainable economic opportunities. So ‘Carrefour des Opportunités’ builds on the ideas by youth, for youth. They do so through different phases, like formation, incubation, connection with the market, connection with funding; really anything they need for their auto-development.
What roles do these centers play in regards to the political exclusion of youth, or how does it deal with that?
Like I said, all youth can come into these centers or we try to reach them through digital technologies. So the accessibility of these centers play an important part in allowing youth to be in touch with politics. If they want to read up on information, it’s possible over there. It’s true that these 50 places are some sort of multi-service center, which – in the context of Burkina Faso – is crucial for connecting youth with the areas they normally feel excluded from.
Still, I have to admit that political exclusion and participation is a sensitive topic, especially right now. So we’re currently discussing the best way to approach this. What’s a better way for the embassy to support young people and make them part of all of the governance systems? We’re not entirely sure as of yet, but we aim to facilitate this in the future at the village level, city level, district level, and country level.
Some of the centers might be focusing on providing information regarding political participation, while others do not. All in all, it’s considered a pioneering program on engaging with youth within Burkina, especially since it follows the rationale of meaningful youth participation as developed by the ministry in the Netherlands.
How exactly do you use meaningful youth participation in your context?
We rely a lot on the toolkit that is published by Youth at Heart. Specifically, we try to make the embassy youth friendly, since we think this is the first step for meaningful youth participation. Indeed, we want to be considered an embassy for the youth. We do so through three distinct ways: as a youth broker, a youth convener, and a youth supporter.
Regarding youth brokering, we actively encourage youth to come to us and tell them what they need for them to realize their dreams in our country. Sure, sometimes we can’t provide everything, but we will always go out of our way to support them however possible.
That’s where the brokering comes in. If we are unable ourselves to support according to their needs, we still have a broad network of donors that we can connect with the young people to support them through those means. So when we can’t lay the infrastructure for meaningful youth participation ourselves, we can rely on our network.
At this point in time, our network understands that meaningful youth participation is one of the most viable ways of dealing with the social threats of today. Because of that, we are very well able to connect the wishes of youth with the support that’s available.
How about youth convener and youth supporter?
When looking at youth convener, we use the physical places we have within our management as a place for youth to gather. This, then, is different from the centers. It focusses more on organizing events at the spaces within and outside of our embassy. The simple goal here is to bring together youth for discussing topics relevant to all involved.
I remember the time when the Ambassador for Youth, Education and Work came to Ouagadougou a couple of years ago, and we were able to bring in 200 young people who could then ask him questions. It was very fun and inspiring to see, and the ambassador himself hadn’t had such a large group of young people in front of him in any other embassy.
Furthermore, we intent to organize a monthly dialogue between youth and the colleagues of the embassy, or even the ambassador itself. As such, they are given the opportunity to participate in our work. What would be the use of these monthly meetings?
First of all, it simply provides a space for youth to share their perceptions with us policy makers. But, perhaps more importantly, it also works the other way around. The embassy has a lot of knowledge about opportunities for youth. Amongst others, this is within their own programs, but we also have knowledge on opportunities outside our embassy – for example through the programs of the European Union or our donors. So youth inspires us, while we might inspire youth with the opportunities out there
Showing that we are there for them is quintessential for our work. This has to do with the tension that still exists between so called western countries and non-western countries. By recognizing that this tension is still there, and by putting in extra effort for creating an environment of trust, we build towards a brighter tomorrow. Of course, the tension won’t vanish all of a sudden, but when you show you listen and when you show you want to invest in their ideas, we at least move towards a common ground.
So lastly, you also want to be youth supporter. I already touched on this earlier, but it’s basically about facilitating the ideas of youth. If they come with a very concrete plan for an event or something else, we normally try to respond to their requests. We also partner with organizations that subscribe to this philosophy. All in all, how we exercise meaningful youth participation revolves around these three roles.
What are the main challenges that you see right now for youth participation in Burkina Faso?
The first challenge that we’re are facing now is continuing the programs we’re currently engaged in, due to the changing political landscape. The second challenge regards security reasons and political stability.
We as an embassy can’t go in the field at this point. Luckily, we do have good partners who have widespread experience with working in hostile environments, so we can rely on that. Secondly, the digitalization has helped us a lot because it allows us to reach the groups that we want to reach. So while there are certainly big challenges that we’re facing, we also can be adaptive towards these challenges and face them directly.
How about your dreams for meaningful youth participation in Burkina Faso?
Our dream, our ambition, is that every single young person has a positive engagement – or a positive experience – in their respective communities. The dream is to show youth that their participation and their ideas in their communities are respected and valued.
Only as such, you will get the youth to choose to do good for their community instead of following other, militant, paths in their lives. Of course, violence is not the pathway you want youth to take, and showing them that it’s detrimental for their own communities is required to make them reconsider. Or rather, showing them that there are parties – like the Netherlands – that provide alternative and more peaceful pathways in life; the pathways which simultaneously provide more sustainable opportunities for youth itself.
Positive relationships between all youth and their communities is our biggest dream, which also indicates that we’d love to see them participate more in political life. We’d love to see the youth productive, informed, well equipped, and well situated. But, above all, we’d like to see that youth uses their energy, their capacities, and their passion to construct the prosperous society we all want.
If I reflect on the feedback that we get from youth, this would very well be there wish too. They want to provide for their families and communities, but are currently mostly limited to do so. Still, it’s the dream of every youth, and helping them realize this is our objective.