Youth Leaders Warn of Nationwide Demonstration Over Government’s Failure to Resolve DACF Youth Funding Allocation Concerns

ACCRA — Patience is running out. After months of petitions, press statements and pleas to the Presidency, Ghana’s youth leaders are now reaching for their sharpest weapon: the streets.

Frustrated by the government’s continued silence over the exclusion of two flagship youth agencies from the District Assemblies Common Fund (DACF), youth advocates are warning of nationwide demonstrations — a dramatic escalation in a standoff that has simmered since the start of the year.

The Money That Vanished

At the heart of the dispute is the law itself. The National Youth Authority (NYA) Act, 2016 (Act 939) entitles the NYA to five per cent of the DACF. The Youth Employment Agency (YEA) Act, 2015 (Act 887) guarantees the YEA ten per cent. These are not suggestions. As youth campaigners insist, they are statutory obligations with binding legal effect.

Yet when Parliament approved a GH¢8.7 billion DACF package on 17 March 2026, neither agency received its lawful share. Youth advocates have branded the omission ultra vires — beyond the government’s legal power — and a challenge to the authority of Parliament itself.

The collapse has been staggering. By campaigners’ accounts, money flowing to the NYA fell from GH¢85 million in 2018 to a mere GH¢5 million in the first half of 2025 — a cut of more than 94 per cent at a time of rising national revenue.

A Chorus Turning to Anger

The pressure has come from every direction. The Ghana Youth Federation, led by its President Sherif Ghali, has demanded the President intervene. The Ghana Chamber of Young Entrepreneurs has called on President John Dramani Mahama to order a revised formula. Northern youth networks have petitioned Parliament directly. The Youth Budget Monitors have marched under the banner of the “Follow the Money” campaign.

Their language has hardened with each rebuff. As one leader put it, the youth of Ghana should not, at every turn, be begging for what is rightfully theirs.

Now, with disbursement looming and demands unmet, the warnings have shifted from the petition desk to the pavement.

The Government’s Dilemma

The arithmetic is unforgiving. Youth unemployment remains one of Ghana’s most combustible challenges — underscored, advocates note, by the recent crush of applicants for a handful of security service vacancies. Against that backdrop, cutting the very institutions built to create jobs is, in the eyes of young Ghanaians, indefensible.

The demand is simple and unchanged: revise the formula, ring-fence the funds, obey the law.

The question is whether Accra acts before the placards come out — or learns the hard way that a generation told to wait has decided it will wait no longer.