Excellencies, distinguished officials and colleagues, government policymakers, youth leaders

It is a great pleasure to join you for this year’s Continental Youth Symposium, and I would like to thank wholeheartedly the Pan‑African Youth Union and the UN Economic Commission for Africa for the invitation to participate to this important event. This gathering comes at a defining moment for the continent. With nearly 70 percent of Africa’s population under the age of 35, Africa stands as the world’s youngest region. This demographic reality is far greater than a number; it is one of Africa’s greatest comparative advantages. It represents extraordinary talent, ambition, and creativity, while reminding us of the urgency to expand opportunities and confront persistent unemployment.

Ministers here this week will debate development financing: how capital flows, where it lands, and on whose terms. These are precisely the questions that determine whether Africa's digital and green transitions generate wealth that stays on the continent, or wealth that is extracted from it. Your deliberations today belong in direct conversation with theirs.

The answer to those questions is already walking through the door. It is young Africans not as future beneficiaries of decisions made today, but as present architects of the systems that will define tomorrow.

Everyone in this room knows relevant statistics. What I would like to focus on instead is the quality of what is already being built, the structural gaps that remain, and where UNDP believes the next commitments need to land.

African innovators are not adapting technology designed elsewhere. They are originating it. The platforms that have scaled from this continent, in fintech, agritech, logistics, and diagnostics, were overwhelmingly conceived and built by young people responding to realities that no external roadmap had anticipated. That is a genuine competitive position, and one that can be lost if the enabling conditions are not right. Fragmented regulatory environments, limited cross-border data portability, and ownership structures that still concentrate infrastructure on the outside all constrain what would otherwise be unstoppable momentum.

Digital sovereignty is not a slogan. It is a structural question about who captures the value when African data flows. And it is, at its core, a generational question, because the generation that will live longest with those choices is already building, coding, and organizing. They should be at the table where those choices are made.

This is why the African Continental Free Trade Area's digital protocols matter as much as any individual venture. They are the foundation on which continental-scale platforms become possible. UNDP is actively supporting regulatory harmonization across the region. Many countries in the region have innovation labs embedded in national systems alongside governments and youth-led communities, which help identify what is already working at the margins and help it scale. From waste-to-energy cooperatives to community mesh networks, to cutting-edge PMEs on the frontiers of AI and data science springing up in the continent’s innovation hubs, these laboratories are not about importing solutions. They are amplifying what African ingenuity has already produced.

UNDP is proud to accompany many countries on the continent, as they accelerate digital and green transformations. Through flagship initiatives such as the D4SD Hub, a platform anchored right here in Morocco and designed from the outset as a solutions laboratory  with a regional and cross-regional ambition, the Youth4Sustainability programme, and the Timbuktoo initiative targeting one billion dollars for start‑up financing, UNDP is expanding opportunities for young innovators. Complementary programmes, including digital support for youth‑led enterprises in many countries, the Green Growth and Jobs Accelerator, and support to country‑led digital strategies, further advance digital inclusion and financial literacy. Together, these initiatives seek to equip young people with digital, green, and entrepreneurial skills, empower young women, spark climate solutions, and open pathways into emerging digital and green economies.

The green economy and the digital economy are not separate agendas. UNDP's analysis points to more than 8 million jobs in green sectors by 2030, with digital skills running through every one of them. Those jobs will not be filled by a generation we need to train from scratch. They will be filled, and in many cases created, by a generation already in motion. UNDP’s Green Growth and Jobs Accelerator programme and the Youth4sustainability UNDP has created are not training young people for jobs that exist today. They are building capacity for work that is being defined right now, including by people in this room.

UNDP's position is unambiguous: youth are not the inheritors of the digital age. They are its drivers. They are driving the innovation. They are building the sovereignty. They are creating the jobs — for themselves and for others. What they need from us is not charity or opportunity. They need access to capital, to regulation that does not slow them down, to global standard-setting processes in which their voices actually count.

Today’s symposium affirms a powerful truth: Africa’s youth are not waiting for the future; they are actively building it. Our shared responsibility, as development partners, is to match creativity with opportunity, innovation with investment, and leadership with meaningful platforms that can provide the necessary space for youth to shape the digital era.

In a few minutes, the young leaders on this stage will take over, and will produce actionable recommendations to support the amazing energy and creativity of African young change-makers. 

We all need to listen.

Thank you.