The Youth Cafe was invited to facilitate the East Africa Youth Policy Review supporting Leap Leadership Institute’s course on Leading Positive Youth Development. The course seeks to strengthen the capacity of youth professionals to conceptualize and implement programs for young people in Africa.

This course addresses the question; How might we support young people to reach their full potential? Furthermore, the course is objectified to strengthen the capacity of crucial youth enablers and actors in designing and delivering effective youth interventions, to enlist, empower and enable a community of practitioners programming for youth on the continent, and to identify and recognize individuals and organizations (participants) who are dedicated to harnessing youth potentials.

Every one of us can make a contribution. And quite often, we are looking for the big things and forget that, wherever we are, we can make a contribution. Sometimes I tell myself, I may only be planting a tree here, but just imagine what’s happening if there are billions of people out there doing something. Just imagine the power of what we can do.-Wangari Maathai

Active citizenship means people getting involved in their local communities and democracy at all levels. Active citizenship can be as small as a campaign to clean up your street or as big as educating young people about democratic values, skills, and participation.

The active and meaningful involvement of citizens in public affairs is the distinguishing feature of democratic societies, which are judged by the extent to which governments open up to citizen involvement in public affairs and the space they give for citizens to hold the government accountable.

It is because of this that citizens in Kenya, East Africa, and Africa, in general, continue to demand increased space for participation. Citizens’ voices, especially the youth, comprise about 80% of the estimated 146 million East Africans below the age of 35.

The median age ranges between 16 and 19 years, with the lowest median ages of 16 years and 17years in Uganda and Tanzania, respectively, in decision-making are of paramount importance, primarily when reflecting on the scale of the particular decision and its implication.

Where decisions concern the urgent need to improve essential service delivery in a specific community, young people need to take part in decision-making processes to influence or contribute to their outcomes.

Citizen engagement is a form of interaction between citizens and their elected officials to promote the delivery of inclusive, accessible, and responsive public services. It is the right of citizens to access information regarding service delivery processes and use such information to act; at the same time, it is the duty of service providers to share such information freely and take necessary measures to comply with citizens’ demands.

Historically, perceptions of being young vary between adults and young people, among different parts of society, political, social, and cultural systems, and people from different historical backgrounds. Civic engagement is increasingly recognized as an essential component of youth development because it can help build human and social capital.

The practice of civic engagement has a critical impact on educating young people about their rights and responsibilities as citizens and allowing them to develop skill sets that are valuable to them as they transition to adulthood.

Civic engagement is also perceived as a driving force for community and national development as it enables youth to unleash their potential and contribute to developing their societies. Political and economic shifts in recent years, as well as ongoing social transformations, have highlighted the growing disparities between many young people and the political and economical pillars in East African societies. 

Most of the Movements, such as the Uganda Youth Network, which practically advocates for meaningful youth participation in democracy and youth civic engagement, also the Tanzania Bora Initiative, which advances youth participation, have been driven mainly by young people demanding a more significant say in their governance structures, employment, and economic life, and societies more generally, as a response to growing discontent with their ability to influence and have a say over their political, social and economic lives.

Moreover, as newer technologies increasingly infiltrate the lives of all, especially young people, youth are turning to alternative forms of participation to have their views and voices heard and to bring about change in their societies. ICTs, mainly social media, has played a prominent role in young people’s civic engagement in recent years.

With active citizenship, people can challenge both the structures and systems that do not work for them and advocate for better leadership. There is also the knowledge and understanding of the political, social, and economic context of their participation to make informed decisions.

Active citizenship allows citizens to interrogate real solutions to problems rather than indulging in scapegoating, discrimination, and other tactics peddled by extremists. It also empowers them to influence the decisions that affect their lives. It also supports democratic cooperation that is based on the acceptance of universal human rights and the rule of law, values diversity, and includes the whole community.

Despite efforts, there are still weaknesses related to civic citizenship of youth, including high youth unemployment rates, inequality of opportunities in education and training, social exclusion from quality services (housing, health, culture, and justice), discrimination, poverty, and risk of marginalization are still relevant in East African societies.

Poor understanding by citizens of the role of elected representatives has also contributed to a lack of consideration by citizens of the functions of those elected for key positions when demanding accountability. Citizens are yet to fully appreciate and differentiate the executive and their elected representatives' roles.

Critical actors in civic engagement and participation in East Africa include; Civil Societies, which play a key role by providing integrity and boosting confidence among the citizens to participate actively.

Governments are also helpful in fostering a culture of civic engagement through simple and effective means demonstrating their desire for transparency, citizen involvement, and open dialogue. To amplify civic engagement levels in the community: NGOs are considered important tools for motivating the community.

Many relevant youth policies enable active citizenship and meaningful participation in the region. At the East African level, there is an East Africa Community Youth Policy whose overall objective is to guide the East African Community in the planning, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of programs to address youth issues in the region while ensuring sustainable social, economic, and political development.

The fact that the youth constitute the largest segment of the population in all Partner States makes them a critical section of society to forge forward the EAC integration agenda. The policy prescribes strategic priority areas and actions to guide the implementation and address youth challenges. It also articulates the need for harmonizing definitions of the youth, related legislation, and programs carried out across the region.

In Kenya, we have The Kenya Youth Development Policy (KYDP 2019), which is part of the Government policy commitment to a greater cohesive society, and equitable, inclusive, and participatory economic and social process for sustainable development. The Policy ensures that the youth, the families, and communities benefit from its full implementation.

The Policy seeks to improve the quality of life for the youth in Kenya through their empowerment and participation in economic and democratic processes as well as in community and civic affairs.

It also advocates for creating a supportive social, cultural, economic, and political environment that will empower the youth to be active actors in national development. The Policy Goal is to promote the holistic empowerment and participation of the youth in socio-economic and political spheres for national development. 

One of the priority areas of the Kenya Youth Development Policy (KYDP) (2019) is Effective civic participation and representation among the youth. Public participation is critical as entrenched in the Constitution of Kenya (2010). Thus the government will ensure youth civic participation and representation to ensure their voices are included in social-economic development.

The government will entrench values, patriotism, and volunteerism to achieve this. The youth have the energy, skills, and time that can be harnessed to support socio-economic and political development through volunteerism and internship, amongst other opportunities.

With such options, the youth find a rare chance to make a difference in the lives of their fellow citizens and society. This Policy strongly advocates and encourages all stakeholders to undertake strategic actions to inculcate the culture of volunteerism among the youth. 

The government has also made commitments to involve the youth in activities that promote volunteerism and community service while developing their sense of patriotism and promotion of national values and principles of Governance by; Supporting the development and implementation of a National Youth Volunteerism Policy Framework and guidelines; Increasing outreach and capacity of the National Youth Volunteer Service; educating and teaching in the youth culture of patriotism, national cohesion, values, and volunteerism; mainstreaming youth volunteerism in all sectors of Government at national and county levels among others.

Furthermore, the policy aims to develop and implement strategies that enable the youth to participate in voluntary activities and community initiatives by; encouraging, nurturing, and supporting community-based projects, activities, and events involving the youth, Promoting active citizenship, social inclusion, and solidarity among the youth.

This will encourage the youth to take part in activities for their personal and community wellbeing. As well as to support transformative leadership, effective civic participation, and representation among the youth. Transformative leadership is key to the development of any country. Youth with their energy should take up leadership roles in society so that their potential can be tapped for the benefit of the community.

To realize this, the government has committed to strengthening the participation of the youth in governance and leadership roles by organizing periodic forums at national, county, and ward levels to receive views and strategies on youth matters; developing a framework for identification of youth representatives in Parliament and County Assemblies; and promoting youth exchange programs and mentorship programs at intra-county, county, regional, national and global levels among others.

In Uganda, Civic engagement is advanced by the Civic Engagement Action Plans (CEAPs), designed to deepen citizen engagement with the scorecard results and activate citizen demand for better services. They were first introduced in the implementation and assessment of FY 2014/2015.

The centerpiece of this methodology component is the creation of action plans by citizens for using the tools of civic engagement to engage with their councilors to address persistent service delivery issues.

The civic engagement tools include petitions, SMS messages, letters, and community meetings. These tools act as vehicles for citizens' voices. Local Government Council Scorecard Initiative (LGCSCI) researchers, who are by and prominent nominees of like-minded CSOs in the districts, facilitate the CEAP process, thereby deepening their roles as essential intermediaries between citizens and elected political leaders. In this role, they amplify citizens' voices and monitor government response to the action plans.

CEAPs are meant to achieve the following: Help citizens understand the scorecard results and how to use them to demand accountability from LGCs, increase citizens’ awareness of LGC roles and responsibilities, increase citizens’ capacity to use civic engagement tools to press for improved service delivery, and build LGC capacity in the Legislative Role, Contact with Electorate and Monitoring performance areas.

In addition, the government formulated the Uganda National Youth Policy, which aims to unlock the youth's potential for sustainable wealth creation and general development. The Policy is operationalized through the National Youth Action Plan (NYAP). The youth are vital constituents of human resources for social, economic, and technological development.

Their ideas, aspirations, energy, and vision are essential for continuing growth, yet they face many challenges that inhibit exploiting their potential. The Policy was therefore developed to guide and address the multitude of needs of the young people.

Youth involvement, participation, and governance are other policy priorities. To achieve this, the action plan first objectifies to enhance increased and effective youth representation and participation in critical decision-making positions at all levels.

The main strategies that will be applied are; Lobbying and Advocacy, Capacity Building, and Behaviour Change Communication. Secondly, it objectifies advocating for the rights of youth with disabilities to participate in youth programs actively.

The plan will promote awareness creation and capacity building, primarily through training to attain the above objective.

In Tanzania, to advocate for public participation in decision-making, the Tanzania government introduced citizens’ participatory approaches (bottom-up) to enhance community-based decision-making in implementing development projects.

Among these is the Public Expenditure Tracking System (PETS) methodology. PETS is a community-based resource tracking system that follows the public funds from the sources at the central government up to the end-users.

PETS encourages social accountability, integrity, public satisfaction, and financial transparency of public funds regarding the money allocated for public projects. It checks whether the funds were used accordingly and wisely by evaluating the value for money and standards.

Activities within this program consist of sensitization for citizens and local authorities on transparency, accountability, and participatory decision-making methodologies, formation and training of PETS committees at the village level, support for tracking activities of PETS committees, and dialog meetings between the public and local decision-makers on the planning and implementation of local development projects.

In the same breath, Tanzania has worked to develop a National Youth Development Policy. The Tanzanian National Youth development policy provides. The policy statement on Youth Participation and Good Governance states that: there's the direction to youth, partners, and other stakeholders on youth development issues shall be a mechanism to facilitate effective participation of youth in structures and issues defined in the Local Government system, Central Government, and other participatory organs at national and international levels.

Nevertheless, despite these policies and others, there are policy failures. There is an increasing awareness that policies do not succeed or fail on their own merits; instead, their progress is dependent upon the implementation process. Four broad contributors to policy failure can be identified: overly optimistic expectations, implementation in dispersed governance; inadequate collaborative policymaking; and the vagaries of the political cycle.

Furthermore, faulty policy design can stem from many causes: a poor understanding of the problem; insufficient knowledge of the implementation context, unclear and contradictory goals; poor quality evidence; and an absence of political backing.

Some of the policies have overly optimistic expectations. It might be thought that the more extensive and expensive policies – “major projects” – would be those most carefully assessed for risk, yet “overoptimism” was the title given to an influential review of failure in major government projects.

The interacting factors contributing to such overoptimism include; complexity (underestimation of the delivery challenges); evidence base ( insufficient objective, accurate and timely information on costs, timescales, benefits, and risks); misunderstanding of stakeholders (optimism about the ability to align different views); behavior and Incentives (interested parties boosting their prospects); and challenge and accountability (decision-makers are seeking short-term recognition).

Similarly, successful delivery performance is found to be an ongoing challenge for centers of government. This is especially the case where policies require a long-term focus.

The three standard features that complicate delivery are; costs and benefits are distributed unevenly over time – there is a long time lag between implementation and positive outcomes; they tend to be intellectually contested, politically contentious, and hard to deliver; and the causes and effects span government siloes. In short, inadequate policy design is still far too prevalent.

Another challenge relates to Implementation in dispersed governance. We find policies formulated at the national level may challenge ensuring some consistency in delivery at the subnational level. This process is especially fraught where the subnational level has some separate degree of political authority.

Even where governance is concentrated rather than dispersed, implementation will still be highly dependent on the local context. There is then the further complication that those operating at higher levels cannot succeed without understanding what happens on, or close to, the frontline.

One of the salient features of many policies – especially those requiring face-to-face contact with the public – is that “lower-level” staff have considerable contact with external bodies and often enjoy discretionary powers which accord them de facto autonomy from their managers. Although many of the decisions of these actors may seem small individually, in aggregate, they may radically reshape strategic policy intention.

Inadequate collaborative policymaking is a significant weakness leading to the failure to establish a common ground for public problem-solving through constructive management of differences remains one of the critical reasons for subsequent implementation difficulties. Without sufficient common ground to proceed, collaborating actors will have ongoing conflicts over policy legitimacy and organizational mission.

In addition, vagaries of the political cycle affect these policies making politicians tend not to be held accountable for the outcomes of their policy initiatives.  In the event of failure, the likelihood is that they will have moved on or moved out. One consequence is that they are too easily attracted to the prospect of short-term results.

This can lead to pushing through policies as quickly as possible rather than getting involved in the messy, protracted, and frustrating details of how things might work out in practice. Generally, the political will necessary to drive long-term policy-making tends to dissipate over time. The concern is that policy-makers are more likely to get credit for legislation passed than for implementation problems that have been avoided.

There are immediate recommended actions that governments and civil societies can take to ensure sustainability and effectiveness, such as advancing Adequate preliminary consultations with young people. The lack of good collaboration and consultation has proven to be a burden on policy implementation.

Apart from the various experts in different fields that directly relate to the policy, the input should be sought from the people prospectively affected by the policy. Achieving quoracy before and during the policy implementation phase is a big step towards getting multiple potential roadblocks out of the way.

For proper policy design, a complete implementation plan must be developed during the drafting process, covering seven domains: planning, governance, stakeholder engagement, risks, monitoring, review and evaluation, resource management, and management strategy. Each of these is further broken down and made available as implementation “toolkits.”

In the case of conflicts in policy design among collaborating actors, the imperative therefore is for policy design and implementation to become an integrated process rather than simply a series of discrete and distinct stages. Another matter is whether policy-makers have the requisite skills, competencies, capacities, and capabilities to address such systemic flaws and succeed in such an endeavor.

Furthermore, policy tracking and monitoring mechanisms should be created.: The focus here is on the establishment of some form of central “delivery unit” to track progress on the progress of policy implementation by; performance monitoring: tracking progress against crucial policy priorities through the analysis of a constant stream of departmental performance data, problem-solving: undertaking field visits to identify obstacles to delivery and flagging up where additional resources may be needed to address specific problems, and progress assessing: supplying heads of government with routine progress reports.

Other factors that affect youth civic engagement are employment and employability: The low quality of jobs is determined by the difficulties for governments to attract investments that could offer highly skilled positions even if regional governance stability has been steadily improving in the last year. The challenge of youth unemployment is raised by the growth of the working-age population in Africa.

The challenges faced when looking for employment are due to skills lacking within the student body, who cite communication and decision making as some fundamental weaknesses.

Alongside this, Kenyan students have also cited an irrelevant curriculum as one of the main reasons behind shortcomings in graduates' employability skills. Access to education and quality educational environments are two obstacles many children face in developing countries.

For example, there are 13 significant barriers--including having fees or other requirements for entrance into an institution; being unable to afford these fees because of lack of parental income or job stability; past negative experiences with schooling; feeling fear due to constant change or unrest at home or in their immediate community; physical UNICEF proximity (such as not having a nearby institution); social attitudes or tradition that discourage or prohibit attendance; hunger and poor nutrition--which can affect students' ability to learn.

There are several ways recommended how we can tackle this problem: Harnessing East Africa's inventive capacity while continuing to improve foundational literacy and numeracy skills while supporting enriched teaching and learning experiences (such as storytelling sessions).

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.