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Across Africa, young people are navigating vastly different realities, but many are pushing for the same thing: the power to shape the decisions that shape their lives. From young peacebuilders working across lines of conflict to climate advocates demanding accountability and young women claiming space in leadership, their contexts may differ, but their aspirations converge around dignity, opportunity, safety and a meaningful voice in their future.
Every day, young people are choosing not to be defined by their challenges. They are actively developing solutions, mobilizing communities, challenging harmful systems and building new forms of solidarity. The question for institutions is therefore not simply how to include young people, but how to enable them to influence the systems and decisions that affect their lives. This distinction is important to NAPA.
The 2026 International Youth Day theme, “Different Contexts, Common Aspirations” underscores that different realities call for stronger solidarity and support that responds to the barriers young people face. The same principle underpins NAPA’s approach which works across diverse communities while creating pathways for young people, particularly those facing exclusion, to organize, lead and influence the decisions that shape their lives.
Across its advocacy work in peacebuilding, climate and environmental stewardship, gender justice and fighting inequality, NAPA and its partners seek to engage youth not simply as participants, but as leaders, advocates and partners whose knowledge and lived experience can shape change.
In 2025, more than 140 youth leaders across Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Ethiopia participated in Youth in Action Community Dialogues implemented by NAPA partner End Child Poverty Arigatou International – Kenya. In communities where ethnic and religious divisions can run deep, these dialogues bring young people from different backgrounds together to identify shared concerns and develop responses. Participants build skills in mediation, non-violent conflict resolution and advocacy while demonstrating something fundamental to this year's International Youth Day theme: different experiences do not prevent young people from finding common purpose.
The youth dialogues’ impact is compounded by their cross-border and transnational approach that produces significant pathways to youth leadership. For example, through the Life Worldwide Network, young leaders from Kenya and Sri Lanka exchanged peacebuilding approaches and subsequently helped integrate lessons from the exchange into Youth in Action Community Dialogues.
In Uganda, one participant in a Youth in Action Community Dialogue subsequently pursued youth leadership and was elected as a district chairperson of the National Youth Council. This illustrates how locally rooted civic platforms can create pathways from participation to wider public leadership.
At the 4th African Business and Human Rights Forum, youth delegates joined governments and United Nations agencies in discussions on an African framework for human rights and corporate accountability.
From grassroots dialogue to continental policy spaces, the principle remains the same: young people should be able to contribute to decisions wherever their futures are being deliberated.
Digital platforms continue to increasingly provide youth with opportunities to amplify their voices and build solidarity beyond physical spaces. The youth-driven “Stand Up for Children in War” social media campaign demonstrated this potential, mobilizing online engagement around the experiences of children affected by conflict and extending the campaign’s advocacy to wider audiences. However, digital advocacy alone cannot guarantee inclusion. Access to devices, connectivity, digital literacy and safe online spaces remains unequal, and relying on digital participation alone can exclude some audiences.
NAPA therefore works through multiple and complementary approaches to youth engagement, including community dialogues and leadership spaces to digital campaigns, peer learning and engagement in policy and advocacy platforms. This creates different pathways for youth to participate and influence changeaccording to their contexts, while helping address barriers that can exclude them from any single channel.
These approaches look beyond how young people participate to who has the opportunity to participate and lead. Gender is an important consideration, as young women often face additional structural and social barriers to leadership and decision-making. In the 2025 Youth in Action Community Dialogues, approximately half of participants were young women, who participated not only as attendees, but also as co-facilitators and contributors to dialogue planning and feedback, reflecting NAPA’s emphasis on meaningful participation, not representation alone.
Despite their different contexts, young people are already leading collective change. The responsibility of institutions, partners and funders is to ensure that their leadership is recognized, resourced and sustained; and that participation translates into meaningful influence.
Faith actors have an important role in this effort. Their community presence can create spaces for dialogue, challenge harmful norms and connect young advocates with community and policy leaders, including where formal civic platforms are less accessible.
NAPA will continue strengthening pathways for young people to shape advocacy, leadership and decision-making across different contexts.
This International Youth Day, we celebrate not only the future young people aspire to, but the change they are already leading today.
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