PRESS STATEMENT

8 November 2018

African Monitor hosts a side-event at the African Youth SDGs Summit in Accra.

African Monitor (AM) will host a side-event at the 2^nd annual African Youth SDGs Summit on Thursday, 8 November 2018 in Accra, Ghana. The main purpose of the side-event is to launch and present the findings of the Citizens Report, where African Monitor’s youth champions will be in conversation with a high-level panel that will be moderated by AM’s Director, Ms Namhla Mniki-Mangaliso.

Over the past few months, the youth champions from seven Africa countries – Botswana, Malawi, Zambia, Senegal, Ghana, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, who were trained by AM in South Africa – have held citizens’ hearings in their countries and administered survey in 3 communities, through which community members’ voices were heard in a bid to collect Citizens Generated Data and to monitor the implementation of the SDGs in Africa.

This initiative aims to create awareness about the SDGs and to equip citizens, particularly the youth, to better demand delivery of services from their governments and to hold the government accountable; to improve development results and to improve policy responses to the needs of the most vulnerable communities.

With the support from OSISA/OSIWA, AM launched the Citizens Report initiative in 2017 with the aim of collecting citizen-generated data to monitor SDGs implementation, focusing on eradicating extreme poverty in a generation; quality education, skills and employment; and reducing inequality in all its forms, with a special focus on gender, income and spatial inequalities.

Some of the emerging findings the data they have been collecting reveal that most young girls are unable to continue with school after being forced into early marriage. This reveals that child marriage in other parts of the continent is rife.

A youth champion from Nigerian, Hammed Kayode, said that on average in the villages he worked in, only 1 out of 60 people knew about the Sustainable Development Goals.

“Through this initiative, African youth will be able to monitor the implementation of sustainable development in Africa using citizen-driven data and leveraging on new technology where they collect data using the tablets,” said Mr Joseph Maniragena, the Partnership Officer at AM.

He further explained that both Survey and interviews were held in seven countries for now and with the support of the UN Women Africa they will include other three countries from East Africa, where vulnerable communities are purposefully selected in the sampling process.

“The goals and targets chosen for monitoring reflect on “the leave no one behind principle” concept,” he added.

AM believes that at the core of resilient societies is voice.  Voice is the power that gives ordinary people the ability to engage social, political and economic powers in order to express aspirations and preferences, secure their rights, practice their responsibilities, and demand accountability from the state for better development outcomes.

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development promotes this core notion of voice, clearly stating that development is not possible without the empowerment and full engagement of citizens.

The data generated is available on the following links:  Ghana ; Nigeria, Sierra Leon and Senegal.

ISSUED BY: AFRICAN MONITOR and YOUTH ADVOCATES GHANA

For more information, contact Emmanuel  Ametepey on Mobile number +233 242842833 / youthsdgssummit@gmail.com or Joyce Moholola on +27 21 461 4069 / media@africanmonitor.org.