At the African Youth Conference on Natural Resource and Environmental Governance in Accra, Hon. Paul Twum-Barimah delivered a truth Ghana’s leaders have long evaded: without a National Youth Green Finance Facility, our green transition is nothing but a hollow slogan.
For too long, our governments — past and present — have paid lip service to youth empowerment while leaving young people shackled by unemployment and locked out of finance. They stand on platforms, preach about “job creation” and “innovation,” yet when it comes to real action, the banks remain closed, the funds remain inaccessible, and the dreams of our youth remain suffocated.
Let us say it plainly: Ghana’s leaders are betraying the very generation they claim to champion. They boast about billions in loans from the IMF and World Bank but cannot muster the will to de-risk youth-led enterprises. They court investors with fancy speeches but have no structure to channel capital into the hands of those who can actually create jobs. They talk about climate resilience while failing to fund the very youth who hold the keys to sustainable innovation.
This betrayal must end. A National Youth Green Finance Facility is not a luxury — it is a necessity. And yet, those in power drag their feet while young people grind in poverty.
Where is the Ministry of Finance in this conversation? Where are the banks, which gorge themselves on government bonds but refuse to take even a modest risk on youth ventures? Where is the National Youth Authority, which should be leading this charge but has instead become another bloated bureaucracy?
Ghana’s future is bleeding away, not because our youth lack ideas, but because the political class is too timid, too self-serving, and too short-sighted to trust them with capital. The hypocrisy is galling: leaders who were once beneficiaries of free education, scholarships, and opportunities now slam the door in the faces of today’s youth.
If this government — and the financial sector it shields — cannot deliver a Green Finance Facility, then it should stop talking about youth empowerment altogether. Empty rhetoric will not plant solar farms. Empty rhetoric will not build agribusinesses. Empty rhetoric will not give dignity to a young graduate struggling in the streets.
Twum-Barimah’s call is not just policy. It is a demand for justice. Ghana’s youth will not wait forever. If the state continues to betray them, they will find other ways — with or without the system.
The time for speeches is over. The government must act. The banks must act. The investors must act. Now. Anything less is treachery against Ghana’s future.
