The Alliance for African Partnership co-hosted a regional youth dialogue that explored the link between youth entrepreneurship, research or institution of higher learning at Gaborone, Botswana on the 4th-5th of April, 2022.
This scoping exercise emphasizes understanding the entrepreneurship ecosystem actors and institutions engaged in youth empowerment processes to achieve entrepreneurship successes in sub-Saharan Africa. Data were collected through 304 interviews by selected researchers to explore country cases that can enable the Alliance for African Partnership (AAP) and partners, policymakers, private entities, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) at national and institutional levels to make informed decisions and implement effective intervention policies.
Dr. Kwame Yeboah, Coordinator for the AAP/GYAN Youth Transformation Platform, collaborated with Colleagues from Making Cents International and the Bureau of Integrated Rural Development at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana, to author Chapter 8 of the Africa Agriculture Status Report 2021: "Capturing the Synergies Between Youth Livelihoods and Resilient Agri-food Systems". Key messages include:
Perspectives is an occasional paper series published by the Alliance for African Partnership in collaboration with Michigan State University Press. Each volume of the publication is an edited collection of scholarly “thought pieces” which are short, critical reflections providing insights on priority development challenges related to Africa and Africa’s place in the broader global context. Each volume includes multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary perspectives around a chosen theme related to AAP’s six priority areas: agri-food systems, culture and society, health and nutrition, education, youth empowerment, and water, energy, and environment as well as AAP’s three pillars: building bridges, transforming institutions, and transforming lives. The goal of Perspectives is to contribute to thought leadership and global dialogues around positively transforming institutions and livelihoods in Africa and beyond.
Alliance for African Partnership and MSU's Global Youth Advancement Network co-hosted an essay contest titled "Working Together to Create the Africa We Want". This contest, which was open to all African citizens between the ages of 15-24, was part of a series of activities commemorating the launch of the Alliance for African Partnership in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania in July 2017. The essay contest signals a new era of engagement in Africa, where the voice of young people are the driving force behind the partnerships, strategies, and vision that move the continent forward!
Contestants were asked to focus their essays on one of the following six AAP themes: agri-food systems; water, energy, and environment; youth employment; education; culture; and health and nutrition. A panel of eight judges from five countries received over 250 essay submissions representing 20 African nations. Authors of the three top essays received prizes—a laptop for the first place, a tablet for the second place, and a camera for the third place. The first place winner was also invited to attend the Launch, where she read her winning essay to attendees during a gala evening.
Michigan State University International Studies and Programs and African Studies Center hosted a co-creation workshop to engage invited African guests and MSU faculty in open discussion and collaboration on the changing landscape in Africa and the future of institutional partnerships. This workshop provided an opportunity for the MSU community and African leaders to come together to share and build upon ideas about partnership, provide meaningful feedback, and identify the best approaches for building the AAP.
The purpose of this convening was to consider new ways that MSU and its partners in Africa can work together to address the emerging challenges of the new Millennium. The focus of the workshop was on partnerships— understanding previous experiences with partnership, identifying the crucial elements of partnership, and innovating new ways to expand the range of effective and sustainable partnerships to promote research, teaching, outreach, and mutual capacity building.
This is the first in a series of publications that will be put out by the Alliance for African Partnership on various aspects of partnerships in the African context. This edited volume and inaugural AAP publication was the product of numerous discussions in 2016 and 2017 with colleagues in African universities, research institutes, governments, private sector organizations and civil society, as well as with strategic development partners and MSU's Africanist faculty. It is a joint effort between MSU and African contributors and examines the history and trends of partnership as well as aspects of partnership that align with the AAP's three pillars: Building Bridges, Transforming Institutions, and Transforming Lives.
In this policy brief, AAP colleagues lay out a new approach for development assistance in Africa—one that shifts the role of international partner organizations. Instead of providing the technologies, services and answers themselves, partners should help African organizations to do so. The authors emphasize the need to strengthen land grant-type public institutions in Africa that played a huge role in the development of U.S. agriculture.
AgYees examines the potential of sub-Saharan Africa's agrifood systems to provide new jobs for unemployed, underemployed and disadvantaged youth, and identifies constraints affecting the capacity of youth to take up these economic opportunities.
AAP has prioritized a series of consultations and key events with policy makers and other partners, as well as a seed grant program that demonstrates our innovative partnership approach. Building on this initial momentum, over the past six months, the AAP has gone through a process of critical review and introspection. Guided by our senior management, advisory board and feedback from consultation meetings, we have identified key partners and addressed some of the barriers that arose during the AAP’s initial implementation phase. As a result, we have clarified our goals and priorities, evaluated and reconfigured our governance structure and more clearly defined our approach for the next five years. We expect this strategic plan will set the AAP on a growth trajectory. The following sections will lay out the AAP’s governance and structure, value proposition, accomplishments and success stories, partners, financial model and the communication approaches that we plan to use over the strategic planning period. This will provide the underlying framework for accomplishing our strategic activities outlined in this document.
Co-authored by Dr. Isaac Minde, AAP Associate Director, and Dr. Jamie Monson, AAP Senior Advisor. This was the fruit of a collaboration that began at the Bordeaux conference on Ethics of Development and was then solicited for inclusion in a special issue of the Journal of Global Ethics. Dr. Minde presented some of this work at the RUFORUM conference in Nairobi in 2018.
Africa GPS:
Inaugural cohort of scholars selected
COIL Faculty Fellows Program:
2nd cohort announced
AAP Bridge:
Connect and
collaborate online
Transforming Institutions Strategic Funding:
2024 grantees announced
