Report of Online Youth Consultation in Preparation for the Fifth African Development Forum

 

The African Development Forum (ADF) is an initiative led by the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) to establish an African-driven development agenda that reflects consensus among major partners and that leads to specific programmes for country implementation. It serves as a critical meeting point for African Leaders to discuss and reflect on the challenges faced by Africa, and progress made with addressing them with a bid to evolving more innovative and appropriate solutions and strengthening ongoing interventions, to effect positive changes as required. The aim of the ADF is to present key stakeholders in African development (including government, civil society - including youth, the private sector, researchers, inter-governmental organisations and donors) with the results of current research and opinion on key development issues, in order to formulate shared goals and priorities, draft action programmes, and define the environment that will enable African countries to implement these programmes. The dedication of its fifth meeting to youth issues is a timely one and a unique opportunity indeed for the ECA to most effectively integrate youth development into its programming and planning.

The theme of this year’s ADF is Youth Leadership in the Twenty First Century. This is a unique opportunity to reflect on various issues affecting young people, review the diverse efforts that have been made and are being made by young people to address these challenges in order to seek the best ways to forge a partnership between governments, the youth themselves and adults to foster a mutual sharing relationship and create the opportunity for them to draw from their respective expertise to support the efforts being made by their governments towards sustainable development. Moreso, as the ADF comes a few weeks after the tenth year review of the World Programme for Youth (WPAY) to the year 2000 and beyond, it will be a great meeting for young leaders from across Africa to highlight what their governments have done related to the WPAY as well as shortcomings, in order to find ways to integrate the priorities of the WPAY into national youth development programming strategies. This year’s ADF is also an opportunity to launch a Regional Youth Partnership for Development, which will serve as a platform to further the discussions at the ADF, keep young people connected to each other, to share ideas and best practices emerging from efforts in their communities, and to enable them to work together to come-up with multi-stakeholder initiatives that address each development issue from an integrated yet broad based perspective.

Too often, youth participation has been limited to their participation at national, regional, and international conferences. There is, however, a need for more sustainable ways of engaging youth in development processes including strengthening their capacities to effectively address the problems of their communities and give them a strong voice in development processes. To facilitate the process of enhancing effective youth participation at the ADF and to ensure that their participation is carried beyond Addis Ababa to their countries, a major online consultation was held between July and August, which brought together over 110 youth from various African countries. The discussion focused on five major thematic issues, which represent the diversity of the problems faced by African youth.

This report is a summary of the five-week long discussion, and includes a synthesis of all the comments and contributions made by the young people, an analysis of the issues raised and cross-cutting recommendations for action by governments and other relevant stakeholders. The report proposes a regional youth partnership for development, which is meant to serve as a follow-up platform to the ADF and to ensure effective coordination of ECA’s intervention related to young people. It also hopes to serve as a Youth Advisory Network to the ECA.

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