YouLead is Africa’s flagship Youth Leadership Program working to unlock youth leadership potential for a prosperous continent by identifying, recognizing, connecting and fostering cooperation among Africa’s vibrant and influential young leaders and their initiatives.
A joint initiative of MS Training Centre for Development Cooperation (MSTCDC) and the East African Community (EAC) in Arusha, Tanzania. H.E. Jakaya Kikwete, former President of Tanzania is YouLead Africa’s current Patron.
YouLead Africa is one of the beneficiaries of the 2022 AGA Civic Tech Fund Award implemented the upscaled ‘Africa Unplugged Series’, a convergence of social media platforms and high-definition audio-visual streaming, to provide relevant content and engagement for African youth with their leaders. YouLead is one of a number of grantees of the Charter Project Africa. The Charter Project Africa is a pan-African initiative supporting civil society to promote the continental commitments contained in the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance (ACDEG) – the central African Union policy document to advance democratic governance in African Union member states. The project is led by six organisations and lasts for three years; having started in the course of 2021. It has a dedicated secretariat based in Addis Ababa which creates linkages between pan-African civil society and African Union policymakers.
Noting the lack of civic spaces for African citizens, especially young people, to meaningfully participate in governance spaces at the national, regional and continental level, YouLead modeled Africa Unplugged as a continent-wide space for precisely that. For African youth to plug into policy and programming processes and build solidarity on key emerging issues to create awareness on issues specific to youth participation, and voice in governance.
We featured Fiona Kemigisha, Regional Programme Associate at YouLead in the Civic Tech in Africa podcast. She spoke about the current challenges around the particpation of young people in economic and political life. She spoke to Nathi Mcetywa about how YouLead is helping mobilise and skill African young people to participate effectively in economic and political life.
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