Zambia’s focus within the AU-EU Youth Voices Lab is on supporting youth-led participation, advocacy, accountability and institutional engagement, while creating linkages between national youth priorities and wider continental and AU-EU processes. The Zambia programme combines capacity strengthening, youth engagement, evidence generation and dissemination, advocacy, and efforts to strengthen institutions to meaningfully engage young people.
The Change We Want
The Zambia component seeks to strengthen young people and youth-led organisations as effective actors in governance and policy processes, while supporting institutions and civil society to become more youth-centred, inclusive and responsive. This dual focus reflects a recognition that meaningful youth participation cannot be achieved by working with young people alone; it requires parallel change in the institutions, organisations and systems that shape whether youth voices are heard, valued and acted upon.
How We Are Making It Happen
The Zambia programme works across four interlinked areas of focus, each reinforcing the others to create a holistic approach to youth-centred governance:
- Youth Capacity Strengthening – Equipping young people and youth-led organisations with the knowledge, skills and opportunities to organise, generate evidence, articulate their priorities, engage stakeholders and influence the policies and practices that affect their lives.
- Youth-Led Advocacy and Evidence-Based Influencing – Creating opportunities for young people to engage decision-makers and participate in policy and governance spaces, using youth-generated evidence to strengthen advocacy messages and shape policy recommendations at national and broader levels.
- CSO Strengthening for Meaningful Youth Engagement – Working with civil society organisations to deepen their understanding and application of youth-centred approaches, including meaningful youth engagement, inclusive participation, accountability and safeguarding, so that youth perspectives are reflected in organisational practices and decisions, not just in participation spaces.
- Institutional Youth-Centredness – Engaging government institutions, CSOs and other stakeholders to improve their capacity to meaningfully involve young people in policy development, implementation, accountability and decision-making, building more inclusive and responsive mechanisms for youth engagement.
Who We Work With
Zambia’s work is delivered in close collaboration with Oxfam, Restless Development, Search for Common Ground, Youthmakers Hub, ComDev Africa, young people, youth-led organisations, civil society organisations, government institutions and other stakeholders, bringing national youth priorities into dialogue with continental and AU-EU processes. This broad base of partnership reflects the programme’s belief that durable change in youth governance requires the active buy-in and participation of actors across the system, from grassroots youth groups and networks, to established civil society organisations, to government ministries, departments and agencies responsible for policy development and implementation. By convening these different actors around a shared agenda, the programme seeks to build trust, shared understanding and collaborative relationships that can outlast the life of any single project or funding cycle.
As part of the wider AU-EU Youth Voices Lab, the Zambia component contributes to and draws on the initiative’s broader continental momentum, ensuring that national gains in youth participation, governance and institutional change feed into, and are strengthened by, wider AU-EU cooperation. This connection to the continental initiative allows Zambia’s experience, evidence and lessons to inform AU-EU policy dialogues and youth engagement frameworks, while also allowing Zambian youth and institutions to benefit from continental best practice, peer exchange and solidarity with youth-led movements in other countries pursuing similar goals.
