Empowering African Youth: Launching the AYPReS Programme to Drive Systems Change

A transformative milestone in youth development across Africa is set to unfold. From June 10 – 12, 2025, the African Youth Pathways to Resilience and Systems Change (AYPReS) programme will officially launch in Accra, Ghana. Convened by the Partnership for African Social and Governance Research (PASGR) in collaboration with the Mastercard Foundation, this event brings together researchers, policymakers, and youth leaders from ten African countries to co-create a new agenda for youth employment and resilience. Africa is currently facing a youth employment crisis with millions of young people particularly from marginalized communities including refugees, displaced individuals, persons living with disabilities, rural young women, and those engaged in the informal sector, experiencing exclusion from decent and fulfilling work opportunities. This exclusion results in diminished human capital, social instability, and lost economic potential.

Building on insights from the recently concluded African Youth Aspiration and Resilience (AYAR) project, AYPReS aims to amplify youth voices, enhance the understanding of their lived experiences, and co-design systems-level solutions that facilitate dignified livelihoods. Crucially, the AYPReS research programme focuses not only on data collection but also on empowering youth to lead change. Covering ten countries — Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Nigeria, Ghana, Togo, Benin, Senegal, and Côte d’Ivoire, AYPReS endeavours to generate actionable insights into how African youth build resilience and how their agency can influence sustainable systems change.

The programme’s distinctive approach includes:

• Youth-led, participatory research grounded in local contexts.
• An intersectional lens that intentionally includes marginalized youth.
• A Gender Equality and Social Inclusion (GESI) framework to guide all activities.
• Capacity-strengthening for young researchers in youth employment through mentorship and experiential training.

Through this initiative, youth are not merely subjects of study; they are co-creators of knowledge and architects of solutions. The AYPReS Launch and Inception convening is serving as both a ceremonial kick-off and a strategic gathering to align, collaborate, and activate the programme’s vision. The agenda includes the official launch of AYPReS to establish the foundation for implementation and celebrating this multi-country collaboration. Additionally, the convening offer co-creation sessions with country research teams to clarify objectives, refine research methodologies, and aligning timelines for impactful outcomes. PASGR will use the gathering to introduce Utafiti Sera and provide insights into this innovative research-to-policy approach that fosters actionable change among stakeholders. GESI training will be introduced in equipping teams with tools to ensure gender-sensitive, responsive and transformative research. In bringing together a core set of stakeholders of AYPReS – the youth, this inaugural convening will endeavour to lead in formation of the Young Researchers Network (YRN), launching a community of early-career African researchers, complete with a roadmap for mentorship, capacity strengthening, and knowledge exchange.

By the conclusion of the workshop, the participants will have a clearly defined research framework and theory of change, reach consensus on key research questions, tools and team roles, while establishing a continent-wide YRN. Critically, a collaborative action plan for research rollout and reporting will be developed while enhancing capacity to integrate GESI principles in research. This convening marks the beginning of a transformative journey for African youth toward resilience and systems change. In staying engaged in this conversation, we join in building youth-led pathways to systems change in Africa. Read more in the Concept Note.