5 – 7 May 2018
Accra, Ghana
ReNAPRI Technical Chairperson, Lulama Ndibongo-Traub, travelled to Accra, Ghana to participate in ACBF’s 5th Africa Think Tanks (ATT) Summit on “Tackling Africa’s Youth Unemployment Challenge: Innovative Solutions from the Think Tanks”. The ATT Summit aimed at proposing strategies and actionable recommendations for think tanks to meaningfully contribute to the promotion of job creation while sharing knowledge and good practices and developing solutions to effectively tackle youth unemployment issues within the context of Africa’s vision as reflected in Agenda 2063 and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). A total of 113 participants attended the Summit from 32 countries across Africa and beyond. For more information on the Summit, please see the event newsletter.
During the Summit, Ndibongo-Traub was a panelist for a side-event co-organized by ReNAPRI and Michigan State University’s African Alliance Partnerships (AAP), “The Role of African Policy Think Tanks in Expanding Future Youth Employment Opportunities in Support of Agricultural Transformation.” The side-event explored the following topics:
- the current policy initiatives linked to youth employment opportunities in Africa and their effectiveness;
- the extent to which programmatic youth interventions particularly in the changing agri-food systems are addressing or might address youth employment needs in different settings;
- promising context-specific approaches to pull youth into viable employment
- opportunities for wider replication across the continent; and
- opportunities to strengthen existing African-based think tanks and consortia of think tanks to provide African governments with timely responses to priority policy questions related to youth employment in agriculture on a demand-led basis.

L-R: Dr. Malete Leapetswe, Department of Kinesiology, MSU; Ms. Lulama Ndibongo-Traub, ReNAPRI; Prof. Richard Mkandawire, African Director of AAP, MSU; Dr. Kwame Yeboah; Yield Program Director, MSU; and Dr. Isaac Minde, Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics, Food Security Group, MSU.