Africa’s Transformation Crossroads; Youth as Policy Drivers
Africa stands at a defining inflection point. The convergence of demographic momentum, technological possibility, and shifting geopolitical tides is reshaping the continent’s trajectory. The theme Africa’s Transformation Crossroads; Youth as Policy Drivers captures this pivotal moment with urgency and resolve, centring the voices, visions, and agency of Africa’s most powerful and abundant resource: its youth.
Across Africa, young people are no longer waiting at the margins of governance. They are entering its engine rooms, contesting its assumptions, and rewriting its rules. From grassroots movements to legislative chambers, from digital policy platforms to pan-African institutions, a new generation is asserting not merely the right to participate, but the power to lead. This theme challenges the long-held framing of youth as beneficiaries of policy and reimagines them as its drivers, moving beyond representation as performance toward leadership as an institutional norm, one that makes space for dissent, not only applause, and recognises young people’s lived insight and moral contributions as indispensable, not optional.
The crossroads is not metaphorical. Consequential decisions are being made now, about climate adaptation, food sovereignty, artificial intelligence governance, debt architecture, democratic consolidation, and intra-continental trade. At each intersection, the question is the same: who gets to decide? This Forum insists the answer must structurally include young Africans, as genuine partners with meaningful authority over outcomes that will define their lives.
In this spirit, the Forum seeks to foster substantive policy dialogue between African voices and Swiss and European institutions, building the intergenerational bridges and policy pipelines that a transforming continent demands, and anchoring Africa’s strategic priorities within a broader and more informed European public discourse.
Programme
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Venue and Registration
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