The African Development Bank’s (AfDB) Human Development Department and Yunus Social Business recently organised a conference in Tunisia to launch a social business awareness initiative in an attempt to reduce unemployment in the country
The Global Shapers community and Orange were also a part of the organising committee which held the meet at Institut des Hautes Etudes Commerciales (IHEC) in Carthage on 13 March 2013. Founder of the Grameen Bank and 2006 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus addressed the gathering to sensitise people on ways of generating more employment through social business.
At the opening ceremony, the AfDB and Yunus Social Business officially launched the Holistic Social Business Movement in Africa (HSBM), which inludes pilot projects in Togo, Tunisia and Uganda.
This program will be implemented in two phases. The first phase will focus on raising of awareness and capacity-building of stakeholders in social business and the second phase will comprise implementation of social business incubation funds in Tunisia and Togo.
An AfDB statement said that this program will be part of the bank’s joint initiative on youth employment in Africa, in partnership with the African Union Commission, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and the International Labour Organisation. The HSBM will be a two-year program, funded by a grant from the government of Japan and co-financed by the AfDB.
Reflecting on the high unemployment rate in Tunisia, Yunus said, “No one should be unemployed. Given the strength of human creativity, no problem can remain unresolved.”
More than 500 participants from various stakeholder groups like the government, development agencies, NGOs, representatives of large Tunisian and international companies and civil societies engaged in debates during the day-long conference.
After the national conference in Tunisia, the AfDB and its partners has plans to organise two similar conferences this year in Togo on May 16 and in Uganda on June 20.
