I have been in Addis Ababa for about a week now, assisting the African Union with the process of organising the Expert group and youth meeting to discuss the Pan-African Youth Charter, the Pan-African Youth Federation draft concept paper, as well as a document on Culture, Education and Youth.

I have always longed to be in this City! I passed through it in July 2004 for the first time on my way to Thailand for the XV International Conference on AIDS, and the airport was so impressive, so I wanted to explore the city. However, I seemed most disappointed when I got here. Ethiopia has an ancient history as one African nation which never really was colonised by anyone. They fought wars and wars to keep their independence. I read in Nelson Mandela's "Long Walk to Freedom" how organised they were during the freedom struggle throughout Africa, and how instrumental they had been in providing military training to freedom fighters, but this does not reflect the true state of the Ethiopian people.

Many people are really very poor. I do not have any official figures but I see that unemployment here will be over 50 percent. So many beggars all over the place and as it stands everyone is vulnerable to some form of attack. I am very worried and I am thinking of an idea to help move this great African country forward. But come to think of it, Ethiopia is the center for regional integration in Africa. It houses the African Union, the Economic Commission for Africa and many important international organisations. So why are people so poor?

I have always had the opinion that many international development efforts pay alot of attention to logistics and process that they leave out the key components, which remain interventions that reach the people. It seems like many donors just expect a good report in writing and do not really care about impact in terms of how interventions reach the people. I have been sharing this with many young activists and they seem to share the same opinion.

I see great hope with the establishment of a Pan-African Youth Federation. I hope that this will be a great opportunity to move from rhetorics to concrete actions, from declarations to people based development programmes and from frameworks to community development initiatives.I really look forward to seeing this happen.