Creating One African Market:

The AfCFTA is one of the flagship projects of Agenda 2063: The Africa We Want. It is a high ambition trade agreement, with a comprehensive scope that includes critical areas of Africa’s economy, such as digital trade and investment protection, amongst other areas. By eliminating barriers to trade in Africa, the objective of the AfCFTA is to significantly boost intra-Africa trade, particularly trade in value-added production and trade across all sectors of Africa’s economy.

The Permanent Mission of the African Union Mission to the United Nations along with the OIF Mission to the United Nations cordially invites you a Youth Round Table on: "Youth Entrepreneurship  and Innovation for Post-COVID Recovery and Sustainable Development".

The Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) Youth Forum will take place from 25 to 27 April 2023 in a hybrid format.

The Forum provides a platform for young people to engage in a dialogue with Member States and other actors to voice their views, concerns and galvanize actions on how to transform the world into a fairer, greener and more sustainable place guided by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The Youth Forum will address the theme of ECOSOC and the 2023 UN High-level Political Forum on sustainable development (HLPF) on “Accelerating the recovery from the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) and the full implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development at levels”. It will also review progress in the areas of clean water and sanitation (SDG 6), affordable and clean energy (SDG 7), industry, innovation and infrastructure (SDG 9), sustainable cities and communities (SDG 11), and partnerships for the goals (SDG17).

The first STI in Africa Day will be held at the margins of the STI Forum in New York, with a focus on STI4SDGs: Priority Areas, Levers and Actionable Steps for Africa. The STI in Africa Day has two main purposes: (a) To serve as a vehicle for connecting the global community to cooperate, network, showcase, share experiences, build strategic alliances, and, wherever possible, set in motion concrete actions that advance Africa’s STI4SDGs priorities; and (b) to bring the outcomes of the African Regional Science, Technology and Innovation Forum to the global STI Forum and vice versa, with a view to guiding facilitative actions on both ends.

On the sidelines of the UN Youth Forum, the African Union Mission to the United Nations in New York will convene a meeting with the Africa Ministers of Youth in collaboration with Africa CDC through the Bangda Initiative under the Saving Livelihoods Program and the Office of the African Union Chairperson’s Youth Envoy. The meeting will allow for discussion on good practices, lessons learnt, challenges, and opportunities for the monitoring and realization of Agenda 2063 in line with accelerating the Covid-19 recovery efforts.

In 2023, the theme of the Africa Dialogue Series (ADS) is “Market and Scale: Unlocking Industrialization through Intra-African Trade,” which is anchored in the AU’s theme of the year and focuses on accelerating the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) implementation, mobilizing political commitment to harness trade to boost development across Africa effectively.