Â鶹APP

In the 21st century, Africa finds itself amidst a profound demographic transition, witnessing a substantial increase in its youthful population. This demographic shift not only signifies a numerical change but also heralds an era of unprecedented opportunities for the continent's advancement towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Recognizing the pivotal role of Africa's youth in shaping the continent's future, the Office of the Special Advisor on Africa (OSAA) emphasizes the importance of leveraging this demographic dividend. Central to this approach is the African Youth Fact Sheet, which offers a comprehensive overview of the multifaceted challenges and experiences encountered by the continent's youth.

Covering a wide array of domains including demographics, education, employment, health, and culture, this resource serves as a vital tool for policymakers and stakeholders in making informed decisions to promote youth empowerment and sustainable development across Africa. As Africa's youth population continues to burgeon, tapping into their potential becomes imperative for driving inclusive growth, fostering innovation, and building resilient societies that can withstand future challenges.

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Social protection is critical in reducing poverty, exclusion, and inequality while enhancing political stability and social cohesion. It is an essential policy tool to prevent and recover from economic crises, natural disasters, and conflicts. Formal social protection coverage remains low in African countries and underinvested in areas such as child benefits, maternity protection, employment injury protection, and disability benefits. However, the discourse about social protection extension in Africa has been mostly on formal social protection, with limited recognition of traditional, non-formal social protection schemes that are an essential part of everyday life for most of the African population.

Africa is not an empty space when it comes to social protection. Indigenous, grassroots social protection mechanisms founded on African traditional values and based on kinship or self-organized mutual aid have long acted as an important tool for welfare protection and social cohesion. This policy paper examines the unique role of traditional social protection in African countries, and presents examples of traditional, community-based social protection mechanisms from different parts of the continent. This paper aims to highlight the need for an integrated approach to social protection in Africa, one that recognizes the strengths of traditional mechanisms and incorporates them into the national social protection strategy. As African nations are faced with the compounding risks from poverty, food insecurity, climate change, and conflict and instability, this new, integrated social protection system can help support human capital development, increase access to decent work, and promote a sense of shared responsibility towards Africa¡¯s long-term development and prosperity.

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The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted critical health services in Africa and undermined years of progress in fighting other diseases, such as HIV, Tuberculosis, and malar?ia. In coping with these challenges, medical pro?fessionals and facilities worldwide adopted tele?health appointments to facilitate access to care and utilized big data and machine learning tools for COVID-related contact tracing and prevention.

The pandemic has provided an unprecedented opportunity for African countries to harness the potential of digitalization and technological inno?vation to strengthen their public health systems with a forward-looking approach and improve the well-being of their citizens against future outbreaks. This policy brief highlights the important digital health tools implemented by African countries and provide recommendations on future priority policy actions by African governments and the UN system to catalyze digital innovation for public health.

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The weak presence of the State ¨C including the delivery of public services ¨C is a key contributing driver to instability and violent conflict in Africa. Indeed, a direct line can be drawn between deficiencies and chronic under-capacity in public service delivery on the continent and continued conflict and instability. While service delivery is not the only determinant of State legitimacy, it is a primary way by which many citizens directly encounter the State and shapes their overall perception of it. In this regard, service delivery can affect the risk of violence, in that it affects State legitimacy.

This Advocacy Brief was developed to supplement the Â鶹APP Secretary-General¡¯s biennial report on the review of the implementation of commitments made towards Africa¡¯s development (A/75/950), section E ¡°Promoting peaceful and inclusive societies by silencing the guns in Africa¡±, and the Â鶹APP Secretary-General¡¯s report on the promotion of durable peace and sustainable development in Africa (A/75/917-S/2021/562).

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The COVID-19 pandemic is having a dramatic effect on economies and various sections of society in Africa. Economies, livelihoods, health, social services and development have been negatively impacted by the pandemic. Vulnerable groups are among the worst affected, particularly informal workers, young people, women, persons with disabilities, refugees and migrants. Written in the early days of the pandemic, this policy brief takes a snapshot of immediate impacts of the pandemic on health, economies, peace, security, human rights and humanitarian assistance in Africa. It outlines response measures currently being taken by African and external stakeholders and provides recommendations to protect gains in the fight against the pandemic and maximise opportunities in the recovery for a more inclusive and sustainable future as countries emerge from this crisis.

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