Document Actions

Youth and Leadership in the 21st Century

by Talla Kebe — last modified 2008-04-16 15:10

This community of practice aims at providing a platform to facilitate follow up to the Fifth African Development Forum (ADF-V) on “Youth and Leadership in the 21st Century”, by enhancing knowledge sharing between members of the Post-ADF-V Steering Committee, namely, ECA, the African Union, UNICEF, UNFPA, ILO, IOM, UNDP, and OHCHR, in addition to the youth organizations and networks operating at the sub-regional and regional levels. Moreover, this community of practice will promote the coordination of activities in the context of accelerating the popularization, ratification and implementation of the African Youth Charter and the Year of African Youth 2008.

BACKGROUND

In 2006 various stakeholders met for the Fifth African Development Forum (ADF-V), which was organized by ECA and the African Union in collaboration with other United Nations agencies, the African Development Bank (AfDB), and the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie (OIF). ADF-V, which focused on “Youth and Leadership in the 21st Century”, was a milestone event in terms of putting youth issues firmly at the centre of the mainstream development agenda in Africa.

And thus ADF V ultimately aimed to deepen strategies at the regional and national levels for
translating the potential of youth as a development asset into practical benefits for Africa's
democratic, gender-equal, peaceful and rights-based development, in line with the objectives
of the proposed African Youth Charter, NEPAD and internationally-agreed
development goals including MDGs.

ADF V concluded by adopting a consensus statement vowing, among other issues, to
enhance youth capacity and empowerment. The consensus statement covers a range of
issues affecting the lives of young people and recommends actions to improve gender
equality, access to education, employment prospects, health issues, civil society
involvement, input into decision-making, religious tolerance and conflict resolution. Key to
attaining these improvements is the operationalization of the African Youth Charter, which
was also launched at the conference. The statement also calls for including the Charter as a
monitoring instrument within the African Peer Review Mechanism.

The ADF-V Consensus Statement also made the following recommendation: “The implementation of the recommendations of ADF-V will be the responsibility of an expanded ADF-V Steering Committee including five representatives of youth, two representatives of ministers responsible for youth, and the key partners, notably, AU, ECA, NEPAD, ILO, IOM, OHCHR, UNDP, UNESCO, UNFPA, UNICEF, and UNV.” This Post-ADF-V Steering Committee is chairedby ECA and co-chaired by UNICEF. ECA is the Secretariat to the Steering Committee.

Given the priority that AU, ECA , UNICEF and their ADF-V partners have placed on youth, it was agreed to develop one community of practice focused on developing, sharing and
disseminating on this issue. As part of this effort it has been agreed that ECA, AU and
UNICEF, would collaborate and lead the initiative to develop an approach focusing on
knowledge networking and knowledge asset creation at the regional level.