In this week’s monitor we focus on Africa’s youth. We start with a feature article by Dr. Monica Juma, the Cabinet Secretary for Defence of the Republic of Kenya. She shares insights into the role that the youth can and must play in peacebuilding in Africa. Dr. Juma argues that the youth need to support each other’s work towards bridging the gaps created by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Our second article is by ACCORD’s Keenan Govender who writes an article about the many examples of innovation that Africa’s youth have undertaken during the COVID-19 pandemic. He shows how, from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to Burkina Faso, to Mozambique, Nigeria, South Africa, and many more African countries, young people have developed and pioneered different information sharing initiatives and platforms to educate each other on protection and mitigation measures against COVID-19 and to halt the dissemination of misinformation.
We close with an article by Zainab Usman and Juliette Ovadia on Africa’s vaccine production capacity. They argue that the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the need for Africa to expand its vaccine production capacity to better serve the continent in the long term.