The Youth Café Endorses The One Campaign Open Letter For African And European Leaders.

The covid-19 pandemic called on the collective strength of nations and their citizens and the international community to realize the goal of ending the pandemic. The pandemic was a stark reminder of the importance of global cooperation in achieving a better future globally. As we face shared challenges of curbing the pandemic everywhere like climate change and global inequalities, we need leadership that prioritizes cooperation. We ask that you keep this reality in mind as you shape the future of Africa and European relationships and that you agree to a plan that tackles these challenges and heeds the voices of young people.

At The Youth Café, we believe that the youth are a tremendous and an essential asset worth investing in, consequently, we would like to reiterate The One Campaign's calls upon you to ensure that the voices of the youth are heard and their pleas acted upon. This realization is what has inspired the call by The One Campaign asking you to continue fostering relations between our two continents, in tackling the everyday challenges facing our youth.

Over the last year, we have seen the impact of an unequal distribution of vaccines, with vaccination rates in Africa being far behind those of Europe. This unequal distribution of the Covid vaccine has served as a powerful reminder of the unequal distribution of global wealth. We prorate in One Campaign’s concerns and would like to urge you to reinforce your approach to this realization. Conversely, we urge you to prioritize proper sensitization on the vaccine to increase vaccine uptake among African youth and ensure that vaccines are distributed according to necessity, not by the unequal distribution of wealth in the global economy. 

The World Health Organization released a statement on the 16th of April 2021 stating that the world is failing. The director of (W.H.O) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said “vaccine equality is the challenge of our time”. Unfortunately, only 0.2 % of vaccines have been sent to third world countries, and 82% have gone to upper and second income countries.

Unequal distribution of vaccines has a lot of impact on economies directly and this issue needs to be tackled for the benefit of the youth. According to World Health Organization Regional Office for Africa, one of the key lessons from Africa covid-19 vaccine rollout, is lack of commodities and limited funds, challenges which could be better tackled with reliable funding, including training vaccinators and ensuring sufficient support staff, improving the software for data capture and making sure that every country has enough freezers and logistics elements.

The Youth Café in its Reporting of Covid-19 and Youth found that the pandemic had multiple effects on young people and their human rights. Efforts to mitigate and address the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic must include provisions that are responsive to young people’s needs and uphold their rights, or youth-specific provisions when needed. More decent jobs are part of the solutions to mitigate the impact of the Covid-19 crisis to reduce poverty, food insecurity, and malnutrition simultaneously.

Since the youth make up approximately 75% of the population in Africa, we reckon that it is imperative to address challenges such as inflation, food insecurity, and unemployment to ensure that their future and that of the continent as a whole is secured. We call on you to ensure that investments allocated will facilitate Africa's recovery from the ravages of the pandemic and take steps to create more jobs for the youth.

The Youth Café partnered with the United Nations Major Group for Children and Youth to create a platform that aims to give visibility to youth initiatives responding to Covid-19 and the health, social, and economic consequences of the pandemic. But there is more than can be done on a global scale. For us, the stakes are too great for you to get this wrong. It is the lives and the futures of the youth that will be the most affected, which is why The Youth Café wants a seat at the table to ensure that the decisions taken about the youth tackle the problems that the youth face.

Strong civic engagement is the backbone of smart policies, and now, more than ever, solutions need to be influenced by the creativity and knowledge of young minds around the globe. You have the power to make the partnership between Africa and Europe one that can fight the huge challenges that our generation, and those after us, will face.

The Youth Café is strongly behind the sentiments expressed by One Campaign in their open letter, and we strongly besiege you to ensure that the corporation between Europe and Africa is geared towards driving our generation and those that will follow into a prosperous future.

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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