Empowering Youth for a Sustainable Healthy Future

Overview of the Future Africa and UNICEF Collaborative Project

Future Africa and the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) embarked on a partnership to focus on sustainable initiatives that empower youth through education and community engagement. This partnership was launched with the Youth Empowerment and Health/Economic Responses to COVID-19 (YEaH) programme in August 2020. It was followed by a second programme, Women Scientists and Historically Disadvantaged INSTITUTIONS (YWS & HDI) in April 2021. 

These two programmes, which form the focus  of this publication, were considered two separate phases of the partnership. This is because there was a degree of overlap between the  two programmes, and some projects continued the work conducted in the first programme, or Phase I of the partnership (YEaH), in Phase II (YWS & HDI). 

The initial programme was conceived based on the realisation that COVID-19 would have a considerable impact on the youth, with possible future risks for the next generation. The pandemic brought with it serious impacts and likely future risks for the next generation in terms of reduced employment opportunities, exposure to health threats, and social consequences that could not be addressed without harnessing the diversity and energy of higher education and its extensive collaboration with stakeholders. Phase I therefore focused on scaling up various sustainable skill- and capacity-building activities to respond to the pandemic with a focus on the youth.