12:30pm to 14:30pm | High-level Launch Ceremony of #EnergizeAfrica (hybrid)

Registration | https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Z38LRsj2SpqguxhX3Qvw1A

Africa’s population stands at close to 1.4 billion, and the working-age population, of which the vast majority are the youth, stands at about 725 million. According to the Economic Commission for Africa estimates, the Continent needs to create at least twelve million new jobs annually to manage the unemployment crisis on the Continent. Africa also suffers from the paradox of substantial natural resource endowments, enormous agricultural potential, and a dynamically youthful population - yet it registers poorly on almost all indicators of sustainable development partly because of its balkanisation.

Generally, African countries individually and collectively have underperformed in economic and developmental terms. The implication is that Africa is yet to matter in the international political economy except as a source of cheap natural resources and a market for manufactured products that it most often cannot afford.

AUDA-NEPAD, from its inception, recognised that Africa’s youth must be at the core of its development strategy and prosperity. This is one of the factors that informed NEPAD’s elaboration of the Strategic Framework for the Youth Programme in 2004. Place Africa’s youth at the forefront also informs many of the African Union (AU) Assembly’s decisions regarding policy interventions to ensure that Africa’s youthful demographic profile is transformed into a demographic dividend. Such policy interventions require young women, and the youth to be prioritised in programmatic interventions. For instance, AU’s 30th Assembly (Assembly/AU/Dec.635 (XXVIII) in January 2018 directed that the African Union Comission (AUC) take specific measures to fully achieve 50/50 gender parity and 35% youth quota by 2025 of the AU workforces.

ENERGIZE AFRICA is one of several practical initiatives that AUDA-NEPAD is leading to translate into action as per the Youth Charter proclamation “that the youth are partners, assets and a prerequisite for sustainable development and for the peace and prosperity of Africa with a unique contribution to make to the present and future development”.  Africa owning its present and future requires a high degree of imagination and innovation that will only come from its youth. For this reason, AUDA-NEPAD has designed Energize Africa to fast-track capacity mobilisation for programme delivery and transformation on the Continent.