President of the Republic has declared the year 2009 as Youth Year in Sudan and this is a clear indication that the Sudanese youth are in the hearts and the minds of the government and our leaders.
According to the most recent international documented statistics, the Sudanese youth between ages 15 - 24 represent 17.8% of the country's population. That means that almost 1/5 of our population are youngsters on whom the nation depends in its future development.
It is hoped that the institution assigned to supervise the youth year activities, being it the Ministry of Youth, Culture or The National Youth Union, it should concentrate on the experiences of those youth who worked in all youth activities and to make this year a sample of national unity and voluntary work which serves the nation.
Peace, national unity, development, tolerance, peaceful coexistence, and democratic transformation are the essential issues facing the nation. Youth should address those issues apart from partisan and tribalism.
We need from our youth to be the example of coexistence between Sudanese.
We always say that youth are half the present and all the future so we should assist them to build a united nation far-away from wars, and ethnic conflicts.
By doing this we might succeed in returning Sudan to its early good days as a model for peaceful coexistence.
We should learn the lesson of the civil wars which erupted in the country during the last years, and we should know that the gun will never solve a problem but in the contrary it will destroy and make everything at a ruin. On top of that the gun will destroy the morals and our deep-rooted culture of tolerance and of solving our issues in peaceful manner.
It is necessary to make the year 2009, a year for a bright future to our youth who will shoulder and protect the peace, unity and coexistence of which Sudan is well known for in world history.
The government's role should concentrate in rural development by creating productive projects for the youth as by doing that we can stop the migration of youth towards the capitals, hence utilizing their energies in developing their areas instead of traveling to the capital in search of work which may not help even in earning means of living for them.