Egypt’s Sisi pledges to hold ‘periodic youth conferences’

“Holding periodic youth conferences has provided successful results and has been a great communication platform among the world’s youth,” Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi said yesterday.

Speaking at the Arab-African Youth Forum held in Egypt’s southern city of Aswan, Al-Sisi stressed that the youth forums were an important tool for communication between the youth and officials.

He pointed out that the forums were a “platform for sharing experiences and ideas among the youth and to learn more about youth’s concerns and dreams for the future,” hoping to host similar event in Egypt “every three months”.

“Before 2016 there had been a real problem in communicating with our youth in Egypt,” Al-Sisi noted. “I then sought to find new methods to interact with the youth until one day one of the youth floated the idea of holding a youth platform,” he explained.

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Pointing to a recent presidential programme for training and rehabilitating youth, Al-Sisi said that it was aimed at helping young people develop their leadership skills. The president also agreed to establish what he described as “a National Academy to train youths for high state professions.”

“Egypt’s political, economic and security challenges are not different from those facing fellow Arab and African nations,” he added, noting that they must be “firmly confronted.”

Al-Sisi called on all African governments “to proactively interact with their young generations.”

The three-day Arab and African Youth Forum was launched in Aswan on Saturday under the title “World Youth Forum, New Horizons.”