By Aldridge Dzvene
Outgoing Deputy SADC Youth Leader in Empowerment, Ambassador Apphia Nyasha Musavengana, has called for a fundamental shift in the way youth empowerment is implemented across the region, saying success should be measured by businesses created, contracts secured, exports made and wealth built rather than participation in programmes and conferences.
Speaking at the conclusion of her current regional youth leadership cycle, Ambassador Musavengana said SADC needs to move beyond treating youth empowerment as a policy aspiration and establish systems that give young people direct access to finance, markets, procurement opportunities, technology and regional trade networks.
“Youth empowerment in SADC must move from being a policy aspiration to becoming a measurable economic outcome,” she said.
“We need to change the way we define success. It should no longer be enough to say that young people have been empowered because they attended a conference, received training or participated in a programme.”
Her remarks come as the Southern African Development Community enters a new leadership phase under South Africa, following Zimbabwe’s Chairpersonship from August 2024 and Madagascar’s tenure from August 2025.
The transition comes at a time when industrialisation, economic integration, entrepreneurship, agricultural transformation, infrastructure and human capital development remain central to the regional development agenda.
For Ambassador Musavengana, however, the effectiveness of those priorities will ultimately be determined by whether young people can convert them into tangible economic opportunities.
“We should be asking: How many sustainable businesses were created? How many young people accessed capital? How many government and private-sector contracts went to youth-led enterprises? How many products reached regional and international markets? And ultimately, how much wealth was created?” she said.
Her argument shifts the focus of youth empowerment from participation to outcomes.
Under that approach, the success of a youth programme would not end with the number of people trained or conferences attended, but would be followed through to determine whether participants established sustainable enterprises, accessed markets, created employment and built productive assets.
Ambassador Musavengana said achieving this would require stronger institutional systems connecting young entrepreneurs to the resources necessary to establish and grow businesses.
“Institutionally, we need stronger systems that deliberately connect young people to finance, markets, procurement opportunities, technology, mentorship and regional trade networks,” she said.
“Youth policies must be backed by dedicated funding and clear targets, with institutions held accountable for delivering measurable outcomes.”
She also identified public and private procurement as a critical area requiring greater attention, particularly for emerging enterprises seeking to move beyond survival-level operations.
“A young person may have an excellent business, but if they cannot access a contract because of complicated registration processes, lack of collateral, limited networks or delayed payments, empowerment remains theoretical,” she said.
The concern speaks to one of the practical barriers facing young enterprises, where having a viable product or service does not necessarily translate into access to large commercial markets.
For Ambassador Musavengana, youth empowerment must therefore be connected to the actual machinery of the economy, including procurement, investment, production and supply chains.
Beyond creating opportunities for young people to start businesses, she said SADC needs to focus on developing enterprises capable of surviving and competing after government or organisational programmes end.
“We need to equip young entrepreneurs with the capacity to manufacture, add value, meet standards, package professionally and compete across borders,” she said.
“We should be moving from simply encouraging young people to become entrepreneurs to deliberately building a generation of regional producers, exporters, investors and employers.”
That emphasis brings youth empowerment directly into the regional industrialisation agenda.
For young entrepreneurs, industrialisation is not only about large factories, infrastructure projects or national production capacity. It also creates opportunities for smaller enterprises to supply goods and services, process raw materials, adopt technology and enter regional value chains.
The challenge is ensuring that young people can access those opportunities.
Ambassador Musavengana also stressed that young people themselves must have a greater role in shaping the policies and programmes designed to support them.
“Most importantly, young people must be included not only as beneficiaries of empowerment programmes, but as partners in designing and implementing them,” she said.
“The young people who are actually building businesses understand the barriers on the ground. Their voices must influence policy.”
Her call for measurable outcomes extends into the regional integration agenda, where she argues that the existence of a regional market does not automatically make that market accessible to an individual entrepreneur.
“Regional integration creates enormous opportunities, but opportunity on paper does not automatically become opportunity in practice,” she said.
“For a young woman entrepreneur, crossing from one SADC market into another can still involve challenges around access to finance, information, standards, licensing, customs procedures, logistics, payment systems and business networks.”
The distinction is important because regional integration is ultimately experienced differently by governments and businesses.
For governments, it can be reflected in agreements, protocols and common regional frameworks.
For an entrepreneur, it is experienced through the ability to find a buyer, meet standards, move products across borders, access finance and receive payment.
A regional market can therefore exist formally while remaining difficult for smaller businesses to enter.
A young woman entrepreneur, Ambassador Musavengana said, should be able to identify an opportunity in another SADC country and have a clear pathway to reach it.
“If that journey remains complicated, then the regional market exists in theory but not fully in her reality,” she said.
The issue has particular significance for women entrepreneurs, who can face additional barriers in accessing finance, productive assets, technology, business networks and larger commercial opportunities.
“We therefore need regional policies that deliberately increase the participation of women-owned and youth-led enterprises in cross-border trade and value chains,” she said.
Ambassador Musavengana also called for a change in how young women are perceived within economic programmes.
“We must also move beyond seeing young women primarily as beneficiaries of empowerment programmes,” she said.
“Young women must be recognised as producers, exporters, investors, innovators and employers.”
That perspective provides an important context for the work of Concord for Young Women in Business Global Zimbabwe, which has sought to connect young women entrepreneurs to regional economic platforms and conversations.
Its participation in platforms such as the SADC Industrialisation Week in Antananarivo has provided opportunities for young women in business to engage with discussions around industrialisation, entrepreneurship and regional economic development.
The significance of such participation, however, ultimately lies in what happens after the conference.
For Ambassador Musavengana, regional platforms should create relationships that translate into practical economic opportunities, including access to markets, partnerships, investment, procurement and value chains.
“SADC has the opportunity to turn its regional integration agenda into a powerful engine for youth-led economic growth,” she said.
“But that requires making the systems easier to navigate and ensuring that information, finance, infrastructure and markets reach entrepreneurs where they are.”
She said the ultimate meaning of regional integration should therefore be reflected in the ability of an individual entrepreneur to access markets outside her country.
“Ultimately, regional integration should mean that a young woman with a good product in Harare, Lusaka, Gaborone, Maputo or any other SADC city can look beyond her national borders and genuinely say: ‘There is a market for my business here, and I have a realistic pathway to reach it.’”
“That is the kind of regional integration young people need, not simply borders that are politically connected, but markets that are economically accessible.”
As the current youth leadership cycle comes to an end, Ambassador Musavengana’s assessment places the next phase of the regional youth agenda within SADC’s broader economic transformation programme.
Her message is that empowerment must ultimately be visible in the economy.
It must be seen in businesses that survive, contracts that are secured, products that reach markets, jobs that are created and wealth that is accumulated.
“For me, the ultimate measure of youth empowerment is not the number of programmes launched, but the number of young people who can say: I built a business, I secured a contract, I entered a regional market, I created jobs and I built wealth,” she said.
“That is when empowerment becomes tangible and transformative.”
As South Africa takes forward the SADC Chairpersonship, the challenge will be whether regional policies can increasingly translate into those outcomes, particularly for young women seeking to move from small-scale enterprise into regional production, trade and investment.
For the outgoing youth leader, the task is therefore not simply to create more opportunities for young people to participate.
It is to build systems through which they can access markets, produce competitively, trade across borders, create employment and ultimately own a greater share of the regional economy.
The next measure of youth empowerment, she suggests, should not be how many young people were brought into the conversation, but how many were able to turn that conversation into businesses, contracts, exports and wealth.
