
Special focus on Sub-Saharan Africa

It was expected to be the worst hit, but instead Africa is gaining praise for being amongst the best and waging an effective campaign against the COVID pandemic. The youngest continent on earth, with the average age just 18 years old, sub-Saharan Africa has experienced only a fraction of the death toll elsewhere in the world.
While Africa may be winning the numbers game, it has come at a massive cost and the real losses are only just being counted. Among them 250 million more children out of school; a loss of more than 6% of economic growth throwing the region into its first-ever economic recession. Added to the climate crisis that is making vast swathes of the continent unlivable, a perfect storm is looming. With aid budgets shrinking in donor countries, can Africa benefit from its own demographic dividend to find African solutions?
We ask our panelists if youth leadership today will bring a brighter tomorrow on poverty, climate action, and governance and we explore some out-of-the-box approaches for the region to avoid financial ruin.
On Thursday 3rd December at 15:00 CET | 16:00-17:00 Central African Time CAT, UNICEF Office of Research-Innocenti presented its 10th and last Leading Minds for 2020 with a special focus on sub-Saharan Africa.
Experts
Regional Director for Eastern and Southern Africa, UNICEF
Climate scientist, Founder, Black Women in Science
PhD student China-Africa relations
Humanitarian expert, former SG of IFRC & Red Crescent
Moderator
Moderator