African Youth Dialogue on SDG 3

Dialogue 3: How would the SDGs help in achieving the above vision and objectives?
Should young African leaders accept the SDGs as workable without critical review? The Dialogue will offer a critical review of the SDGs, especially from country level, in the context of the paths China, Malaysia, Singapore and other emerging and middle-income countries took.

Our Approach to the Dialogues:

Moderator/Facilitator sets the SDGs agenda; highlights some of the good things that these goals will make. Moderator will bring in some decision makers, political leaders to opine.

Government representative discusses approaches to fostering the enabling environment for achieving the SDGs, highlighting actions taken by the government through specific initiatives and the associated policies, regulations and monitoring. The inputs will describe the types of instruments being deployed for capitalizing actions toward the SDGs, who manages them and how the instruments can be accessed by elements of the economy – businesses (large, medium, small and informal sectors), communities, women and youth.

Representatives of private sector, United Nations and development institutions (bilateral and multilateral) bring in cases from other countries.

Academics, women, youth, religious leaders and community actors respond, addressing issues such as organizing for accountability advocacy; establishing networks and the environment for social actions, especially to ensure that ideas filter into the initiative and outcomes can be tracked; examples of good cases of advocacy on accountability; approaches for creating and leveraging champions

Building capacity, grassroots support and ensuring inclusion, not forgetting that majority of Africans whose voices can amplify actions of the elite are not included in major schemes.

Discussions will include providing the means for the millions of Africans - who are artisans and engaged in micro-enterprises but are not linked to the value chains of the formal sector – to be integrated into instruments of the special initiatives.