Calls to tackle HIV/AIDS and child labour through collective bargaining and dialogue with employers and governments have come from the first ever UNI-Africa Youth Conference.
Young delegates from 13 African countries helped draw up a six-point action plan that will be presented to the UNI-Africa Regional Conference on October 18.
A third of Africa’s population is aged between 10 and 24 (58% in urban areas) and unions are being urged to mainstream youth concerns into their policies and collective bargaining strategies.

Emily Essumei, Nigeria

"Young people are the horsepower of any organisation," Emily Essumei of Nigeria told the Youth conference. The action plans includes a call for youth structures to be set up in African unions and new ways found to get across the union message to young workers. E-networks that link young activists between unions, campaigns and a mix of social events and informal discussions of youth issues are all being pressed. "We need to encourage young people to take part in union activities," said Jouini Hend of Tunisia. New ways of recruiting young union members are needed.

"Organising is the backbone of the trade union movement," said Innocent Chiweshe of Zimbabwe.
There are nearly nine million young people in Africa infected with HIV/AIDS - 58% of them young women.
UNI-Africa Youth is urging African unions to "enhance tripartite social dialogue (workers, employers and governments) to bring HIV/AIDS policies into mainstream collective bargaining and to negotiate codes of practice in the workplace".
The youth grouping wants unions to develop their policies on HIV/AIDS and spotlights the link between the pandemic to child labour with the growing number of orphans left by the disease.
UNI-Africa is being pressed by the Youth to make the elimination of child labour a priority and include this target in collective bargaining.
The six-point action plan for Youth covers:

• Organising,
• Education and training,
• Youth structures and networking,
• Child labour,
• HIV/AIDS,
• Solidarity.

"Africa’s young generation is confronted with a situation where the future has become insecure and unpredictable," said UNI Youth coordinator Alke Boessiger who has been helping to run the Youth conference with UNI-Africa’s John Musonda.
"Unions are in a unique position to assist young people in this fluid world," said Alke.
Youth delegates came from Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Guinee-Conakry, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, Tunisia, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.