Join us at this year’s Futuremakers Forum from 13-15 July to coincide with the United Nations’ World Skills Day. At the Forum we will hear from business leaders and the employees of the future, discuss emerging trends in the future world of work, and what it means for young people entering the job market over the next decade.

Why YouthConnekt Africa Hub?

Africa's greatest resource is its youth. Yet, this abundant resource has been relatively untapped and facing cross-cutting issues such as limited access to education and finances, deterring health, scarce employment opportunities and low wages, and often excluded from local decision-making. As a result, these challenges, individually and collectively, obstruct the youth from meaningfully contributing to the social, economic and political transformation of their nations and the African continent at large.

YouthConnekt is a platform designed to connect the youth for socio-economic transformation. The purpose of the YouthConnekt Africa (YCA) Hub is to provide a holistic solution to alleviate the challenges faced by African youth by widening the pool of economic, social and civic leadership opportunities through National YouthConnekt initiatives. Essentially, the Hub will be supporting already existing African youth empowerment initiatives to propel and scale their efforts further.

The Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) is a multilateral leaders’ forum on Africa’s development, first convened in 1993 in Japan. The spirit of international partnership is reflected in the composition of TICAD’s co-organizers: the United Nations (UN), UN Development Programme (UNDP), the World Bank, and the Government of Japan since TICAD’s inauguration, with the African Union Commission (AUC) joining since 2010. Over the quarter of a century, TICAD has maintained its uniqueness as a pioneering, open, inclusive and multilateral forum to mobilize global support for African development. At the same time, it has continued to evolve to address both opportunities and challenges affecting Africa in alignment with both pan-African and international visions, such as African Union’s Agenda 2063 and 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, respectively.

Committed to delivering tangible results on the ground, TICAD is also proud of its follow-up process. As part of it, this report reviews the progress made during the three-year period (2016-2018) since TICAD VI1.

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The Chairperson of the African Union Commission (AUC), H.E. Moussa Faki Mahamat will launch the “1 million by 2021 Initiative”, which targets direct investments in millions of African youth on four key elements of Employment, Entrepreneurship, Education and Engagement, through leveraging partnerships and private sector opportunities. The initiative will be launched through a Pan African Youth Forum themed “Africa Unite for Youth: Bridging the Gap and Reaching African Youth”.

The YouthConnekt programme is a multifaceted youth empowerment model focused on leveraging youth employability, entrepreneurship and civic engagement through innovation.

Following the July 2017 YCA Summit that recommended to create the YouthConnekt Hub and Fund. This year’s Summit (YCA 2019) will mark the official launch of the YouthConnekt Africa Hub that will serve as a coordination entity that connects and promotes existing youth empowerment initiatives at the continent and ensure implementation of best practices for the youth socio-economic transformation.