The Sauti ya Vijana Nairobi Project seeks to encourage the establishment of receptive, open, and accountable leadership. The main goal of this project is to organize a roundtable with the theme "Building youth-adult partnerships in local governance" that will bring together 40 young people from various youth organizations to debate local governance issues across all sectors as a community of practice. The County Youth Advocacy Handbook will be developed, designed, and distributed as part of this project using the case studies. The handbook will include 30 case studies from our mapping exercise in Nairobi County, mobilizing youth groups to create local networks that link citizens to leaders through a presentation workshop on the advocacy handbook's case studies and a meeting of the youth network, hosting four podcast shows on a quarterly basis to involve youth, leaders, and other relevant actors, and holding consultative policy discussions with political youth leaders and important stakeholders.
The Ignite African Youth project | Youth Democratic Participation And Inclusion In Africa
Africa is a continent of young people, with 75% of the population below the age of 35 and nearly 50% under the age of 19. Yet across Africa, instability, climate-related security, weak state capacity, the tenuous rule of law, amendment/removal of term limits, high inequality, illegitimate elections, inadequate judicial systems, and corruption continue to erode democracy. Moreover, lack of institutional capacity undermines youth engagement in African democracies — from low visibility of youth as voters, limited capacity for youth-led advocacy, cultural attitudes, underrepresentation/exclusion in decision-making, loss of trust in democracy, online disinformation and misinformation, intimidation of young human rights defenders and traditional social norms result to gender inequality, shrinking civic spaces, nepotism and tribalism, hence persistently hindering young people's participation, especially in leadership roles.