East Africa has one of the youngest populations in the world. In Kenya, around 80 percent of people are under 35. Yet young people hold barely any of the seats where decisions get made, and the picture is much the same across the region.
This Roadmap is more than a policy document. It is a collective call to action, written by young leaders from Ethiopia, Somaliland, Uganda, and Kenya.
It urges governments to move beyond symbolic inclusion. It asks political parties to open up their structures and invest in young leaders, development partners to fund youth-led change for the long term, civil society and media to amplify young voices, and the private sector to back sustainable financing.
Young people are not passive beneficiaries of democracy. They are its custodians. The era of tokenism and fragmented effort has to end, and this Roadmap sets out how.
Download the Roadmap here.
You can access a concrete advocacy tool and country action plans related to the Roadmap on NIMD’s website.
The Roadmap is part of the WYDE Civic Engagement programme, powered by the European Union and the European Partnership for Democracy, and implemented by the Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy together with the Westminster Foundation for Democracy and Demo Finland.