The Southern Africa Youth Forum (SAYoF) says lack of financing is affecting young people in the region to contribute positively to socio-economic development.

Co-Chairperson of the forum, Maggie Mwape said this during the launch of the third Southern African Development Community (Sadc) Youth Forum.

Mwape said many youths have good innovative ideas to help develop countries in the Sadc region including Malawi, but there is minimum financial support and mentorship to help them materialize their ideas.

“Young people in the region have brilliant innovative ideas of what they could work on and contribute to the socio-economic development of the region, but they are struggling to materialize because they are neither mentored nor financed,” she said.

She added: “As SAYoF, we have made a number of resolutions which were even shared with the heads of states in the Sadc region, but there hasn’t been any tangible outcome.”

Mwape went on to say that the forum has however developed initiatives to support young people and among other things the forum links the young people to opportunities where they could get financing, mentorship and capacity building platforms.

Nevertheless, she encouraged young people to join the SAYoF development saying youths have stand to have a better opportunity of achieving their goals though the platform and ensure that youth organizations are networking, and being more practical on the ground  and target the grassroots (vulnerable) in addressing various issues affecting young people.