Last year, the World Bank Group-International Monetary Fund Young African Society (YAS), hosted its first African Youth Forum, which resulted in the creation of recommendations to end Africa’s rising numbers of under and unemployed youth. These recommendations included improving access to finance for young entrepreneurs and increasing vocational training for youth. The event was well received, bringing in 1.1 million people connected on Facebook alone and nearly 3,000 tweets on the day of the event.
This year, YAS is happy to announce that the 2015 African Youth Forum, to be held May 22-24, will be hosted in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire.
This is an undoubtedly youth-driven initiative, with every person on the forum’s organizing committee being of African descent and below the age of 35. This committee rallied support from World Bank and IMF senior directors, as well as government officials on the continent. Most importantly, the committee consulted with over 1,500 young Africans during the planning of the event.
The three day event will bring together young innovative leaders from around the African continent to pitch practical and scalable solutions that advance social and economic development in their communities. The forum will also connect young entrepreneurs with experts from academia, development institutions, civil society organizations, the private sector and government in order to support a youth-led development agenda.
The forum will include career building and leadership workshops, a career fair and a development case competition. Five project finalists will be announced at the event, and project leads will present their proposals to elicit funding from investors.
There are several ways to engage:
- Registration for the public is still open here.
- To particpate online, you can RSVP on our Facebook event page which will send you updates and a notification right before the forum begins.
- To join the live discussion, please follow @WorldBankAfrica on Twitter and use the hashtag #AfricaYF2015.
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