Nairobi, 4 June 2025: The Horn of Africa Youth Network (HoAYN) joined national youth councils, government technical officers, regional partners and youth-led organizations for a three-day technical workshop to develop a Roadmap for the implementation of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) Youth Policy Framework.
The workshop convened representatives from IGAD member states, HoAYN member organizations drawn from across the Horn and East Africa region, and technical experts from civil society and development partners. Participating countries included Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Somaliland, South Sudan, Sudan, Uganda, Eritrea, Tanzania and Djibouti. The workshop’s objectives were to translate the broad IGAD policy provisions into practical, country-level actions; identify priority interventions and timelines; and establish monitoring and reporting modalities to track implementation.
Key components of the workshop included:
• Sectoral working groups to map priority actions in peace and security, economic empowerment, migration, gender and climate resilience.
• A modalities session to define roles and responsibilities for IGAD organs, national ministries (including ministries responsible for youth and IGAD affairs), and civil society actors.
• Technical drafting sessions that produced a consolidated draft Roadmap outlining short, medium and long-term actions, indicative lead agencies, and suggested resource mobilization approaches.
Major outcomes and agreements:
• A consolidated draft Roadmap for IGAD Youth Policy implementation was produced and recommended for national validation.
• Agreement to pilot a country-level implementation plan in a set of volunteer countries to test monitoring tools and local coordination mechanisms.
• A consensus to create a regional multi-stakeholder monitoring working group, with active representation from youth networks, to track and report progress to IGAD policy bodies.
The workshop concluded with a call to strengthen coordination between regional institutions and youth-led organizations to ensure that policy commitments are translated into tangible results for young people across the region. HoAYN committed to supporting the Roadmap’s roll-out by coordinating civil society inputs, supporting national validation workshops, and helping set up the regional monitoring mechanism.
Next steps: The consolidated Roadmap will be circulated to national stakeholders for validation, and pilot implementation plans will be finalized in selected countries in the coming months.