Five youth organisations from Ghana’s three northern regions have formally petitioned Parliament, calling on the Speaker to invoke the legislature’s oversight powers to investigate the exclusion of statutory youth allocations from the 2026 District Assemblies Common Fund (DACF) framework, describing the omission as a direct violation of existing law.
The petition, dated March 30, 2026, and signed by the Northern Regional Youth Network, the North East Regional Youth Network, ACTIVISTA, the Northern Regional Youth Parliament, and Youth Budget Monitors, was addressed to the Right Honourable Speaker and copied to the Office of the President, the Administrator of the District Assemblies Common Fund, the Minister for Finance, and the Minister for Youth Development and Empowerment, among others.
At the centre of the petition is a legal argument the signatories say Parliament cannot ignore. Section 17 of the National Youth Authority Act, 2016 (Act 939) mandates that five percent of the DACF shall be allocated to the National Youth Authority (NYA). Section 23 of the Youth Employment Agency Act, 2015 (Act 887) directs that ten percent of the DACF shall go to the Youth Employment Agency (YEA). On March 17, 2026, Parliament approved an 8.7 billion Ghana Cedi DACF package for decentralised governance and development. Neither institution received its statutory share.
“These provisions are statutory obligations with binding legal effect, not discretionary policy guidelines,” the petitioners stated. “Their omission in the 2026 DACF allocation framework is therefore ultra vires, inconsistent with the laws of Ghana, and undermines the authority of Parliament itself.”
The petition also documents a longer pattern of underfunding that predates the 2026 approval. According to data cited by the groups from Youth Budget Monitoring mechanisms, allocations to the NYA collapsed from GH₵85 million in 2018 to approximately GH₵5 million across the first two quarters of 2025, a reduction the petitioners describe as exceeding 94%. In percentage terms, the statutory 5% allocation has effectively shrunk to approximately 0.6% of what the law requires, with comparable deficits recorded for the YEA.
Parliamentary Minority data confirms the scale of the reversal. Records show consistent DACF allocations to the NYA under the previous administration, including GH₵76.4 million in 2017, GH₵85.7 million in 2018, and GH₵71.2 million in 2019. In 2026, despite the total DACF allocation rising from GH₵7.51 billion in 2025 to GH₵8.7 billion, the NYA received nothing.
Data from Ghana Statistical Service showed that about 72.4% of the estimated 1.3 million unemployed persons in the third quarter of 2023 were youth aged 15 to 35. The northern petitioners argue that this context makes the funding omission particularly damaging, as rural and marginalised youth populations bear a disproportionate share of the consequences when regional NYA offices lose operational capacity and entrepreneurship, civic engagement, and skills programmes are curtailed.
The petition sets out five specific prayers to the House. It asks Parliament to investigate the omission, direct the Administrator of the DACF to comply without further delay with Act 939 and Act 887, order an immediate rectification of the allocation framework, publish disaggregated DACF data for statutory beneficiaries including youth institutions, and engage relevant parliamentary select committees particularly those on Youth and Sports, Local Government and Religious Affairs, and Finance in a comprehensive inquiry into youth financing under the fund.
The northern petition arrives as pressure on the government has already been building from multiple directions. The Ghana Chamber of Young Entrepreneurs had earlier called on President John Dramani Mahama to direct the DACF Administrator to revise the formula and restore the allocations in line with existing legal provisions. The Member of Parliament for Walewale, Dr Mahama Tiah Abdul-Kabiru, also called on the Ministry of Finance and the DACF Secretariat to ensure the full and timely release of statutory allocations, citing a “Follow the Money” campaign that tracked DACF allocations to the NYA and YEA between 2017 and 2025 and revealed worrying inconsistencies in funding despite statutory requirements.
The petitioners closed with a direct warning to the legislature. “Failure to act risks deepening youth disenfranchisement and undermining national development,” they wrote, adding that they remained ready to support Parliament and all relevant stakeholders in advancing equitable youth financing.
Download the JOINT PETITION – YOUTH NETWORKS Here
