A Health Strategy Needs Youth Agency
Africa CDC has a bold strategy for youth health, launched last year and now entering its first full year of implementation. The question Namibia, and every member state, must answer is whether the political will and funding exist to match it. We write this together, a Namibian doctor and a Kenyan medical student, because this […] The post A Health Strategy Needs Youth Agency appeared first on The Namibian .
Africa CDC has a bold strategy for youth health, launched last year and now entering its first full year of implementation. The question Namibia, and every member state, must answer is whether the political will and funding exist to match it.
We write this together, a Namibian doctor and a Kenyan medical student, because this article is itself a small demonstration of the Africa CDC Yes! Health Strategy 2025-2028 in practice.
Two young African women, both supported by Africa CDC’s youth programmes, both in Mombasa for the ninth RHNK Pan-African Adolescent and Youth SRHR Scientific Conference, the continent’s largest sexual and reproductive health gathering that took place from 2 to 5 June.
We returned carrying two things: genuine pride in what African youth are building, and a productive unease about whether our institutions are serious enough to sustain it.
THE WOMAN WHO BUILT THIS STAGE
This conference exists because of one woman’s vision: Nelly Munyasia, executive director of the Reproductive Health Network Kenya (RHNK), who has built the premier Pan-African platform for adolescent and youth (sexual and reproductive health and rights) SRHR.
For Dr Nafuka, it was a return to a stage that changed the trajectory of her work: a panellist last year, a presenting author this year, with a Namibian flag flying in the conference hall.
