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Three people, three projects

The first Africa- Europe Youth summit in 2007 ended with much enthusiasm – and high expectations. What have youth organisations been doing since then? We find out about three new initiatives.

Abdrahamane Ouedraogo (Burkina Faso) participates in the Long-Term Training Course for Trainers on Africa-Europe Youth Cooperation, set up by the North-South Centre of the Council of Europe.

How did this project arise, and how does it work?
It was initiated following a request at the 2007 Youth Summit for trainers or multipliers working on Africa-Europe cooperation. It brought together 30 people from Africa and Europe in three phases. The first was a residential seminar in Cote d’Ivoire. The second phase involved mentoring, in areas like project management or peace-building, supported by a virtual learning platform. Over the course of a year we exchanged ideas and worked on common projects. Then a second seminar took place, in 2010 in Cape Verde.

What are the benefits?
Before, I really wanted to do cooperation projects but didn’t have the tools, networks, or partners I needed. This was an opportunity to have the network to put things into practice. At the same time, I’m now a multiplier, promoting this idea of entrepreneurship among other young Africans.
Furthermore, simply living together for a week – as part of a long-term process, knowing we’ll be working together for some time – helps tackle the stereotypes between Africans and Europeans.

What comes next?
At the end of the process, we created the Trainers for Africa-Europe Cooperation network to share the benefits of the project with others. Whenever an organisation needs experts on Europe-Africa cooperation, we can help.
I feel very optimistic. In our team there are people with great enthusiasm, everyone works hard - I see this growing.


Marcos Andrade (Portugal) of the North-South Centre of the Council of Europe, talks about the African University on Youth and Development, which took place for the first time in 2009. Almost 300 people have participated so far.

How did this initiative come about?
It is inspired by the University on Youth for Development that we’ve been running for 11 years with various partners. Recently we have transferred these ideas to Africa: we had the second African edition this year, in Cape Verde.
In a sense it is a result of the 2007 Youth Summit, which led to a number of activities and more resources being put together in order to organise something like this.

How does the university work exactly?
It’s a cycle of 7-10 days, based on non-formal education. It is residential (with space for about 150-170 participants), so people are there to learn but also to live together – to live an intercultural experience.

What is the main benefit?
The most interesting thing is to see how, in putting together youth organisations, you can achieve a very strong political output. You have many different activities, from training courses to board meetings to political seminars – all this together has an explosive, positive output – because you have people together who would not normally spend a week together: youth leaders, youth workers, representatives of institutions.
The university is also part of the broader strategy towards a fully-fledged Euro-African youth programme that follows up on the last summit.


Maquento Lopes (Angola), Secretary-General of the Pan-African Youth Union tells us about the Southern African Regional Seminar on Youth Policies and the African Youth Charter, which took place in April 2010 in Angola.

What is the aim of this initiative?
The aim was to assess progress on youth policy and on ratification of the African Youth Charter in the region. Many countries have ratified the Charter. But at the seminar it was concluded that the aim should not just be ratification, but implementation. We were happy to hear that some countries were already implementing the Charter, for example Angola is promoting youth employment.

Who participates?
National Youth Councils from the region and international youth organisations, as well as delegates from Europe, because we also want our partners to learn about what we are doing. In fact, we don’t only discuss youth policies in the region – we also discuss cooperation with other regions. Such cooperation is developing. I was happy to see that youth councils from southern Africa are also finding ways of bilateral cooperation within this framework, for example the National Youth Council of Spain now has concrete projects with National Youth Council of Angola.

What next?
At this year’s seminar, it was clear that people from the regions needed to meet more frequently, to evaluate what is being done but also to strengthen cooperation and exchange within the region. The idea will be to meet every 2 years.

Posted in | 27.11.2010

By: Anna Patton, Ireland