Time for youth to lead the economic revolution

OXFORD, U.K. - June 17, 2016 - PRLog -- We've always heard about the 'power of youth,' whenever it comes to bringing about a revolution. The 'power of youth,' however has not been this impactful, or capable of making an impact as it is now, with 1.8 billion 15 to 24 year olds.

No other sector is better equipped to use this power to do something meaningful than the emerging markets. If they manage to utilise the resources properly, emerging markets, which contribute to more than 50 per cent of the global economy, can indeed pull off our generation's revolution.

"Never again is there likely to be such potential for economic and social progress," according to the United Nation Population Fund.

Yet, there doesn't seem to be an urge to properly exploit the surge in youth population. Especially in developing countries, that can use this opportunity to leave a global mark, a quite opposite scenario has been noticed as young people are dealing with inequality, below par standards of education, unemployment and underemployment as well as violence and crime.

Economy won't see progress until health, education and welfare systems are stable enough. Efforts have been made over the past decade to ideate a growth strategy through conferences and summits, but the vision has been rather narrow, adhering to the perspective of investors. The point that we've forgotten over these discussions is that social cohesion is equally pertinent as promoting entrepreneurship.

That's why C&C Alpha Group, an international private equity business headed by Bhanu Choudhrie, organised the Emerging Markets Symposium in collaboration with Green Templeton College at Oxford University. International experts were a part of the event under the chairmanship of Shaukat Aziz, former Prime Minister of Pakistan, to primarily focus on the social and welfare issues of developing countries.

The symposium this year focused on young people in emerging markets and out of the 45 experts from 20 emerging markets and high-income countries, who were joined by 14 graduate students, one in three were below 30.

Bhanu Choudhrie, an entrepreneur who also started young, has suggested the following norms to support the youth revolution:

*Forming educational strategies that promote citizenship, critical thinking, entrepreneurism and social skills and not just academic and vocational skills.

*Reshuffling health systems to make them more sensitive towards youth, including a more direct approach to mental health problems.

To bring about a meaningful and positive change, the most important thing is positive communication between generations.

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