Eligibility: Vetted aspiring political leaders and party managers in 47 counties
The Party of National Unity (PNU) has announced plans to set up a Youth Academy for political party employees and aspiring political leaders to train for leadership positions and roles.
Plans are at advanced stages to lease and acquire 48 training centers across the country to roll out the program early next year.
Negotiations with Universities professional experts and select political leaders were ongoing to recruit resource persons.
Each county will have a youth academy cum conventions center to train grassroots mobilisers and branch party management cadres in addition to a national co-ordination academy at the party headquarters on Musa Gitau Road in in Nairobi .
Explaining the logic behind the Youth Academies training program for party workers and aspiring leaders, Laikipia Governor, Ndiritu Muriithi, said it had become urgent for the country to think about professional training of political party employees at various levels.
“Political parties are custodians of a people’s hopes, aspirations and visions for their welfare, safety, prosperity, strength and resilience in countering threats. The youth aspiring to assume political leadership are being equipped with a set of skills, ethos and values about what Kenya is about and aspires to be” he said.
Kenya youth who comprised critical chunk of voting population were at risk of being swayed by distorted information and propaganda. This is due to gaps in information about history of planning of economic growth and how policy and political leadership drive progress towards desired changes.
“The curriculum is ready. The overarching objective is to equip our youth and aspiring leaders with factual knowledge about how Kenya has evolved from Devonshire White Paper in 1923 to Vision 2030 under execution today, what we have achieved, what we have missed and why” Muriithi said.
The exposure and interaction with policy makers and experts will prepare party workers to understand the purpose and mission of a political party.
“It is not just to win elections but what to do with that power at levels from MCA upwards. Political parties bear the institutional memory for society into the future. This is why PNU is passionate about Vision 2030 and the National Social and Economic Council. These are PNU founding philosophies .We need to pass those DNA to the next generation of leaders” Muriithi said.
At the dawn of Kenya as a modern political entity, competition between European settlers, the Indians and Arabs for political power and economic control tended to overlook the majority Africans.
Africans depended on Christian missionaries for articulation of their affairs to the colonial government in a language they did not understand.
The situation obtained until 1923 when the Devonshire White Paper pronounced the position of the British government on the attempts by the settlers to set up an autonomous minority white self-rule in Kenya.
The central plank of this policy document was the assertion that:
“Kenya is an African territory, and the interests of the African natives must be paramount and that if, and when, those interests and the interests of the immigrant races should conflict, the former should prevail”
It was called Devonshire White Paper after then secretary for colonies, sir Victor Cavendish, the 9th Duke of Devonshire.
Among other policy implications, the Devonshire White Paper introduced a raft of modest pro-Africa native reforms among them:
- Establishment of technical schools for Africans by a 1924 Education Ordinance
- Appointment of Presbyterian Missionary the Rev John Arthur, to the Legislative Council in order to represent African interests.;
- To pacify the Kikuyu peasantry who were restfive following violent protests led by pioneer nationalist Mr Hurry Thuku, Devonshire White Paper allowed for the formation of an African party, the Kikuyu Central Association, which presented African grievances to the colonial government.
However, the mischief inherent in formation of political parties was it was to be localized at the tribal level, and not nationwide parties that could threaten the white minority domination.
The paper is also credited with allowing the White Hall to avert the efforts of settlers to set up minority self as they had done in South Africa and Zimbabwe (South Rhodesia)
