Strategy
The Africa Youth Partnership was launched on April 18 2022 at the 2022 ECOSOC Youth Forum. Over 100 participants from 40 countries participated in the virtual event, which ended with a call to action for youth-led action for an inclusive recovery.
Youth Task Teams (YTT) were created, comprising 94 young leaders across the ten participating countries, namely Gambia, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Through a series of virtual trainings sessions and several in-person workshops, the YTTs gained new skills for youth-led research, including designing their accountability frameworks and mapping their priority areas for their respective countries.
With their improved skills, the YTTs conducted youth-led research in their respective countries. Using the ‘steps to accountability’ framework designed during the workshops, the YTTs took the lead in framing their research questions, collecting data, and identifying the key insights. They collected high-quality data on the socio-economic impact of COVID-19, recovery efforts, gaps in recovery efforts, youth engagement in economic recovery, transparency, and accountability in the disbursement and use of COVID-19 funds, etc. They also drew insights from in-depth consultations and desk reviews. The findings enabled the YTTs to create various knowledge products – 10 policy briefs (in all 10 participating countries), a joint communiqué (by Gambia, Ghana, Liberia and Nigeria), a policy statement (Zimbabwe), and 3 petitions (Ghana, Uganda and Zimbabwe).
In West Africa, young innovators from the ten participating countries acquired new capacities for designing solutions to drive change and contribute to post-pandemic recovery efforts. Through a mix of expert advice, tools, and networking opportunities, the young innovators gained new skills that enabled them to create a portfolio of about 1300 innovations in the areas of health, education, agriculture, climate change, among others. As part of the capacity building effort, the top four innovations received a share of the dedicated price money totalling $20,000 USD towards implementation of their solutions.
In Eastern and Southern Africa, four online hackathons were organised focusing on the digitalisation of the education system, meaningful youth engagement in decisions and development spaces and the improvement of health delivery systems in remote areas. The online co-creation exercises brought together 256 participants from five countries.
In Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe, the YTTs succeeded in convening civil society organisation representatives, youth, media houses, academics and other stakeholders. In response to a call by the Zimbabwe YTTs, various stakeholders committed to creating a dialogue platform for young people and decision-makers for regular engagements. In Ghana, an online youth petition via www.change.org demanding the removal of taxes on menstrual pads attracted over 13,000 signatures.
Separately, delegations of YTTs engaged across various regional and global platforms, including the International Transparency and Accountability Conference (ITAC) in Tanzania, the International Conference on Public Health in Africa in Rwanda, the Youth Connekt Africa Summit in Rwanda, the International Climate Change Conference (COP-27) in Egypt, and the International Conference on Family Planning in Thailand.
As we work to achieve our mission, we are cognizant of the fact that no one strategy or set of activities will succeed. We know that the pandemic itself has changed course, sometimes with new variants, and thus present new challenges for duty bearers. As the pandemic evolves, so will our strategy.
