Young Women and Men’s Aspirations and Resilience: Prospects for Livelihoods, Employment and Accountability before, during and beyond COVID – 19 | Senegal Country Inception Workshop

The Partnership for African Social and Governance Research (PASGR) with the support of the MasterCard Foundation will host Senegal Country inception workshop on Thursday, 17^th February 2022 from 0830hrs-1700hrs WAT at Pullman Hotel and Resorts, Dakar Teranga.

The inception workshop is the fifth in a series of research activities under the “Young Women and Men’s Aspirations and Resilience: prospects for livelihoods, employment and accountability before, during and beyond COVID – 19 project.” The three-year project is being implemented in seven African countries-Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Uganda and Senegal. This project contributes to The MasterCard Foundation’s goal to enable 30 million young people to secure dignified and fulfilling work by 2030.

‘’It is about time we start thinking about the kind of evidence we are producing and its role in shaping policy dialogue, discussions and critical decisions on pressing public policy issues in Africa. This project engages Senegalese youth and brings their voices into the policy conversations to shape decision making process in matters that affect youth in Senegal, said Dr Anthony Mveyange PASGR’s Executive Director. He added that, “the project being multi-country in nature, it allows the collection and collation of evidence across the different countries allowing both PASGR and MasterCard Foundation to create a robust evidence and platforms for bringing out youth voices across countries. With COVID-19 now being endemic, the project is envisaged to inform policies and helps in designing interventions that appropriately respond to the needs of African youth in addressing the unemployment bulge and other COVID-19 related challenges.’’

The convening will bring together the youth and other relevant stakeholders involved in youth activities (such as government officials from different sectors such as the youth affairs, labour, finance, trade and industry education and youth employment agencies, development partners, academia, unions and civil society). “One of the major challenges that we face globally and particularly in this continent is how to come up with policies or programmes that are informed by robust evidence. At PASGR, we strongly believe that people’s everyday experiences constitute an important part of the evidence we use in engaging our policy makers. We aim to bring these stakeholders together to share in the research design, give them a safe space to share their knowledge and experiences, thus co-create the research so that the generated evidences speak to the contextual issues that they deal with every day,” said Dr. Martin Atela, Head of Research & Policy, PASGR.

The workshop will be officially opened by the Minister of Youth, Madame Néné Fatimata Tall, who will also deliver the keynote address.

During the workshop, an Utafiti Sera (Kiswahili word for research policy) House will be established. Utafiti Sera is PASGR’s innovative evidence-informed policy making approach that brings stakeholders from the design of the research to the uptake of the evidence to enhance policy outcomes. It is a ‘process’, place’, ‘forum’, ‘platform’, or a ‘vehicle’ for transforming research evidence-based knowledge for policy uptake. It is a platform for interested participants to have continuous conversations on Youth Aspirations and Resilience in Senegal during and after the study.

The research team in Senegal is led by Dr Ibrahima Niang, from Cheikh Anta Diop University of Dakar who will use the workshop to share the research project with stakeholders, obtain their input on the research design and approach as well as mapping stakeholders that will be critical for the project success.

This event is timely as it comes at a time that the Senegalese economy is undergoing socio-economic transitions including pressing challenges with Senegalese youth who are grappling with underemployment, unemployment and social exclusion. Yet, despite these challenges, they have shown remarkable ability and desire to overcome the challenges through plural adaptive strategies, a culture of resourcefulness and ‘Do It Yourself’ (DIY) (popularly referred to by young Senegalese as taqualé). This project seeks to provide youth with the opportunity to have their voices heard and to understand the challenges and opportunities the youth experienced as a result of the recent outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in fulfilling their aspirations.