What Progress Has Africa Made In Achieving Sustainable Development Goals For Young People?

These 17 different goals work together to create a better world and have the power to end poverty, fight inequality, and stop climate change. The goals are focused on various themes including ending hunger, promoting peace and justice, and ensuring access to adequate water and sanitation.

The UN Youth Strategy is an essential framework whose objective is to facilitate increased impact and expand global, regional and county-level action to address the needs, build the agency and advance the rights of young people in all their diversity around the world and ensure their engagement and participation in the implementation, review and follow up of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals as well as other global agendas and frameworks.

It acts as a framework for the entire UN to guide its work in every context with and for young people on the three pillars of peace and security, human rights and sustainable development. It therefore aims to substantially strengthen the UN's capacity to engage youth and take advantage of their views, insights and ideas to achieve a coordinated, coherent and holistic approach to UN work on young people's issues.

The 2021 Youth2030 Progress Report is the United Nations' system-wide youth strategy's first progress report that gives an insight into the status of Youth2030's implementation across the UN system. It outlines the global governance and coordination structures developed to ensure coherent system-wide action, emphasizes how the United Nations responds to the prerequisites of young people in a COVID crisis, and how it works with Governments and young people to achieve the SDGs. Reflections are also highlighted in UN Country Teams' (UNCTs) on the ambitious UN reform process on youth planning.

The main SDGs for Africa being to end poverty and fighting inequalities, brought the need to issue such a report. The pandemic has resulted in major challenges such as disruption of learning schedules for students, loss of jobs and major deterioration in mental health among the youth. Young women in particular have been exposed to the risk of gender-based violence, burden of care work and lost many economic opportunities. The global implementation of the youth strategy has been rapid due to the project programmes, strategic partnerships, support to government and innovation with young people.

A general focus on Africa’s performance reveals that Africa continues to drag behind most of the world in socioeconomic development, despite the widespread adoption and progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals. A 2019 report from the Sustainable Development Goals Center for Africa, 'Africa 2030: Sustainable Development Goals Three-year Reality Check' showed that minimal progress had been made. Africa still has over half of the world's poor with one African out of three vulnerable to food insecurity.

The Director General of the Sustainable Development Goals Center for Africa, Belay Begashaw, noted that “Africa is on track to achieve three goals: SDG 5 (gender equality), SDG 13 (climate action) and SDG 15 (life on land). Indeed, the projections of the SDG Center (which have sufficient data for SDGs: poverty, malnutrition, maternal mortality, school net enrollment and electricity access, and drinking water) reveal that the SDGs will be unlikely to be met by all African regions except North Africa. The struggle in Central Africa throughout all the goals is more pronounced.”

First priority to be looked at is Engagement, Participation and Advocacy. Over the years especially in Africa, the human rights context and the perception of the youth created challenges in having advocacy roles by young people. Firstly, in many African communities the patriarchal nature of society affects the perception of youth participation and civic engagement. Secondly, the advancement in digital technologies has not altered the status of young people living in certain African societies, due to lack of access to such infrastructure or greater parental control on the use of social media. 

However across the continent, platforms for promoting the voices of young people in the community are gaining momentum and starting to be established. UNICEF and other partners in the year 2005 supported the establishment of Rural Voices of Youth program that aimed at promoting the participation of young people in rural areas with the goal of ensuring that their voices are heard on child rights issues.

In 2010 on the other hand the Young African Leader Initiative program was launched in countries such as Kenya, Zimbabwe and Ghana by USAID in an effort to foster economic growth, enhance democratic governance, and strengthen civil society structures. USAID is providing opportunities for young people to pursue leadership roles and participate in decision making forums. 

Second priority are the Informed and healthy Foundations. Education is central to the development and improvement of the youth worldwide. Increased effort in advancing education accessibility, quality and affordability are central in eradicating poverty, hunger and promoting sustainable development and economic growth. Between the years 1970 and 2010 the percentage of children across the African region who completed primary school rose from 46 percent to 68 percent, that is a 50% increase. Countries across Africa continue to face major challenges in education nonetheless.

A 2018 world bank comprehensive descriptive analysis of the current state of education in Africa highlighted that many children remain  out of school, learning levels are low for those in school and that ‘the problem of low learning emerges in the early grades’. 

Gender responsive education is another key aspect that has long been cited as a potential high-value investment by researchers and policymakers. Gender disparities widen as young people move up the education ladder and therefore it is necessary to address this issue at the early stages of education. For example the reduction or elimination of school fees has shown that it reduces the likelihood of young girls being forced into early marriages. Additionally the provision of sanitary pads to schoolgirls in Kenya has reduced absenteeism significantly. 

Africa’s youth of ages 10 to 24 years comprise 33% of the population. Due to the high fertility in the continent this percentage will increase in coming years. Majority of the African youth experience poverty, unemployment and limited education opportunities. These challenges can have an implication on the health of the future generation, for they are the contributors to the growth of the economies of Africa.

The state of health in the African region as analyzed by the World Health Organization in 2018 found that life expectancy had increased from 50.9 years to 53.8 years between the years of 2012 to 2015. The state of health services in the continent were at a level of 0.48 out of the possible 1. Analysis on the state of health system investment on the other hand showed that African countries are spending 60% of their health expenditure on investments such as workforce infrastructure and medical products.

Third Priority is Economic Empowerment. In the year 2015, the population of African youth between the ages of 15 and 24 years was estimated to be close to 230 million. This is 19 percent of the African population. With the population of the youth steadily increasing in the coming years, the future of Africa's development will be shaped by them. A large population of young people in Africa are unemployed, with the disabled youth being the most affected.

Effective youth policies and actions have not addressed youth development because they lack a balanced approach. This lack of a balanced approach can be attributed to the challenge of getting reliable and accurate data on information to do with the youth. This means that countries should uphold global commitment and work on evidence based and innovative solutions that will address matters of the youth directly. 

The private sector should additionally support African states' effort to create youth-enabling employment and self-employment ecosystems and strategies that will improve the quantity and quality of jobs.

Fourth priority is Youth and Human Rights. Young people continue to be marginalised in the political and legislative frameworks with the youth having no platform to share their opinions and ideas. Furthermore, young girls and women face high level of discrimination when trying to position themselves in levels of governance.

Different institutional and social environments have great influence on the attitude of the youth towards political matters and systems. Therefore there is a great need for reform in the structures of politics in the African continent. Public and political affairs participation needs to be provided and promoted in addition to the development capacity of  human rights education. 

Fifth priority is Peace and Resilience Building. The youth have never been seen as catalysts for peace, security and humanitarian action in Africa. This mandate has always fallen on non-governmental organizations or the older generation. Youth in Africa are less inclined than the older generation to address their freedoms in collective action, that is why fostering and protecting an environment conducive to the actions of the youth makes them more resilient. 

Promoting participation in the formal peace process creates a safe space for the young people where they participate in inclusive, democratic and structured dialogues. This also gives young people the chance to develop youth-led organizations in peace, security and humanitarian action.  

The Youth Café works with young men and women around Africa as a trailblazer in advancing youth-led approaches toward achieving sustainable development, social equity, innovative solutions, community resilience, and transformative change.

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