The Youth Charter has unveiled its Youth 4 Africa framework, a continent-wide initiative designed to use sport as a catalyst for education, employment, and social transformation across Africa.
The UK-based non-profit said the new framework marks a major expansion of its three-decade global work in Sport for Development and Peace (SDP). It aims to unite governments, CAF member associations, Pan-African institutions, NGOs, and private investors around an integrated youth strategy that links sport with learning, skills, and livelihood opportunities.
Under the plan, the Youth 4 Africa framework builds on the Youth Charter’s Community Campus Model, which brings together six pillars, sport and physical activity, education and digital skills, health and wellbeing, arts and creative expression, enterprise pathways, and peacebuilding. The model promotes a holistic approach to youth empowerment rooted in community transformation.
The Charter highlighted recent African initiatives such as the Tibu Africa–IOM Morocco “Africa Cup of Living Together” and the CAF–Afreximbank Schools Football Development Programme as examples of how sport can advance education, employability, gender equality, and social cohesion when embedded within national strategies.
Africa’s youthful population, projected to reach over 830 million under 35 by 2030, represents both a challenge and an opportunity. The Youth Charter says sport, when linked with skills development and entrepreneurship, can unlock this demographic dividend, create jobs, and foster peaceful, resilient communities.
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The organization is calling on the African Union, CAF, and national ministries of education and sport to integrate the framework into Agenda 2063 and youth employment plans. It also urged Afreximbank, the African Development Bank, and private sector partners to finance sport-driven infrastructure and community programmes, while encouraging UN agencies such as UNDP, UNICEF, IOM, and UNESCO to embed sport within youth, migration, and peacebuilding portfolios.
The Youth 4 Africa initiative aims to position sport as Africa’s “universal language” for development, connecting talent, technology, and opportunity to power a new generation of leaders, entrepreneurs, and changemakers.
