This newsletter by AFIDEP consists of several articles. The first article : Malawi President commits to championing youth development and the demographic dividend in Malawi and across Africa. The meeting and procedures discusses how Malawi can harness the demographic dividend to accelerate socioeconomic transformation and economic development. The meeting also discussed initiatives that the President seeks to pursue in his capacity as the UN Champion for Youth and the Demographic Dividend. The next article on page 2: Africa rising- Action for African countries in order to harness the demographic dividend for socioeconomic development. “The demographic dividend is not a new concept.” This was the message from speakers at the event. Population dynamics and socioeconomic development have been linked conceptually for decades as governments implemented programmes to tackle challenges in health, education, economic reforms, and governance. On page 7 : Addressing the vulnerability of cross-border communities to HIV/AIDS critical for development in the East African Region. However, the study found that the EAC HIV/AIDS transmission and failure to protect key populations in the context of HIV, particularly by criminalising sex work, men who have sex with men, transgender people and drug users, as contentious and unaligned to the EAC HIV Bill of 2012 in most of the member states. On page 8 : Malawi’s youth identify education as critical for transition into adulthood. Youth in Malawi have asked the government to put in place policies and investments that will ensure increased school enrolments, improved access to higher education and technical colleges, and increased employment opportunities. These were the main demands by youth revealed by recent consultations conducted by AFIDEP, Maestral International and the Ministry of Health (MoH) from July 20th to 24th 2015. Page 9 : Hewlett Foundation funds AFIDEP’s new programme to increase evidence use in integrated development planning and parliamentary processes in Africa. This new programme has two main components. The first component aims to enable increased evidence use in integrated development planning in Africa. The second component of the programme aims to assess the effectiveness of parliamentary networks in enabling increased evidence use in debating and other decision-making processes in parliaments in Africa.
