The African Youth Context
Africa is the world’s most youthful continent, with a rapidly growing population where a significant majority is under the age of 35. This demographic reality demands a fundamental shift in perception. It requires moving beyond viewing the continent’s youth as mere beneficiaries of development, towards recognizing them as its primary architects and drivers, imbued with unique wisdom and perspective. African youth agency refers to the capacity and collective action of young Africans to influence and direct their own lives, their communities, and the broader social, political, and economic trajectories of the continent towards tangible transformative change. It moves beyond the passive concept of ‘youth participation’, where young people are merely invited to a pre-set table, towards active co-creation and systemic influence as equals.
Past Y20s
The Y20 is the official youth engagement group of the G20, established in 2010 as its oldest formal dialogue forum. Despite its long history, the 2025 summit was forced to confront a challenging legacy. A critical issue driving the discussions was the fact that none of the 350 policy recommendations from previous Y20 summits had been adopted by G20 leaders. This history of limited tangible implementation and influence over G20 decisions cast a long shadow over the 2025 proceedings, informing a collective desire to move beyond symbolic statements toward more credible and impactful engagement.
SAIIA’s Attendance at the Y20 Pre-Summit
The South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA), through its Futures Programme, attended the Y20 Pre-Summit to amplify African youth voices in global governance. The team contributed actively to thematic discussions, ensuring that the long-term aspirations and systemic concerns of young Africans were highlighted as central to informing the conversations.
Key contributions at the Pre-Summit set a serious tone. Ambassador Xolisa Mabhongo, South Africa’s G20 Sous-Sherpa, underscored the Y20’s role and urged it to drive meaningful change, from grassroots initiatives to global institutions. Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, former chairperson of the AU Commission, delivered the keynote address, calling on African youth to harness education and skills development as the ‘fastest equaliser’ in the struggle against inequality, and to propel sustainable ocean and mineral economies. Cross-group solidarity from Business20, Women20 and Civil Society20 reaffirmed a shared commitment to intergenerational cooperation, while highlighting the gap between aspirational rhetoric and the realities of accessible participation. Off-the-record conversations with delegates, organisers and working-group chairs allowed the Futures Programme to press for openness and broader inclusion.
The Path to the Y20 Summit
SAIIA’s contribution to the Y20 was the culmination of a carefully sequenced process that began months in advance. In early 2025, the Futures Programme committed to engaging substantively with the Y20 working groups, focusing on the theme “Meaningful Youth Engagement and Reforming Multilateralism for a Just Future.” A key element of this strategy was the design of an official side event for the summit.
This groundwork was strengthened during the Y20 Pre-Summit on 18–19 June 2025, where SAIIA ensured that young African perspectives were represented in the agenda-shaping discussions. However, informal exchanges at the Pre-Summit highlighted a gap. The formal negotiations remained largely closed to wider participation, a symptom of the very age-based and elitist hierarchies the Y20 seeks to overcome. In response, SAIIA formally proposed a dedicated side event to the Y20 Secretariat to explicitly foreground diverse youth voices. This proposal was subsequently accepted and incorporated into the official Y20 Summit programme.
SAIIA’s Youth Futures Lab During the Official Side Event Programme of the Y20
On Tuesday, 19 August 2025, during the Y20 South Africa, SAIIA hosted a plenary session “Shaping Tomorrow: Transformative Youth Futures Lab” as part of its final summit. The session was co-facilitated by Francois Pretorius and Karabo Mangena, with a powerful contribution from changemaker Tshegofatso Thulare.
The lab was designed as an interactive, capacity building experience introducing delegates to futures thinking and the Youth Futures for Systemic Justice project, which built on the first phase of research that focused on identifying youth skills needs and orientations to the future. These initiatives were supported and receives ongoing partnership from Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC). The session aimed to strengthen youth engagement and policy dialogue through practical exposure to foresight methodologies and the insights emerging from the IDRC-funded project. The facilitators opened by linking futures and foresight approaches to the Y20’s 2025 theme: “Building Bridges: Uniting for Solidarity, Championing Equality, Driving Sustainability.”
Key lessons from the Youth Futures for Systemic Justice project were shared. This project ran from October 2023 to May 2025 and directly addressed the systemic exclusion of young people from development planning in East and Southern Africa. Moving beyond passive dialogue, it promoted action-oriented anticipation by equipping 36 changemakers with practical skills in strategic innovation and relational systems thinking. This approach fostered a critical shift in the role of youth from passive recipients to active agents of change. Young people working at the margin on innovative projects with potential high impact were approached to participate in the project. They and their initiatives were termed ‘seed initiatives’ of transformation, capable of both reimagining and enacting more just futures.
Tshegofatso Thulare delivered a moving reflection on her own experience using foresight to build collaborative networks and reimagine pathways for transformation, demonstrating the practical wisdom youth bring to complex challenges. The core of the session centred on a 45-minute participatory exercise using the Three Horizons Framework. Working on a digital Miro board, delegates mapped the current “business as usual” systems (Horizon 1), envisioned preferred futures (Horizon 3), and identified the transformative innovations required to bridge the gap (Horizon 2). The facilitators concluded by underscoring how youth-led anticipatory practices can help embed meaningful participation and long-term thinking to advance intergenerational fairness in global decision making processes.
The Final Outcome of the Y20 Summit
The Y20 South Africa Summit did not issue a final communiqué. This was unusual since previous Y20 forums had produced such documents by consensus. The break from precedent occurred because delegates felt that past communiqués had not resulted in tangible implementation or influence on G20 leaders’ decisions. This decision was also influenced by frustrations that none of the previous 14 Y20 communiqués had been explicitly reflected in G20 leaders’ declarations. Indeed, the 350 policy recommendations made by youth delegates over the years had not been adopted. The Y20 South Africa presidency and delegates decided that producing a communiqué that ended up being merely a “talk shop” with no real impact was ineffective. Proposals were made by the Y20 South Africa leadership and delegates to install continuity and implementation mechanisms such as an alumni network and a permanent Y20 council, similar to other G20 engagement groups (a troika). The political dead-end was particularly about proposed council’s composition and functioning. Due to the lack of consensus on these proposals, it was opted to produce a “chair’s summary,” which highlighted consensus points and convergences from the negotiations, along with South Africa’s high-level priorities. These priorities included institutionalising youth mainstreaming within the G20 and establishing a ministerial working group focused on youth.
The outcome of the Y20 South Africa reflects a push towards more credible and actionable youth engagement rather than symbolic statements. The Y20 process ended up being tokenistic, chaotic, and meaningless. African youth attendees had little to no agency to provide formal input into the proceedings and negotiations. With South Africa hosting the Y20 and the African Union becoming a permanent member, there should have been a concerted effort to convey Africa’s youth needs and expectations. The negotiations should have been conducted in a manner that placed African youth priorities at the forefront of the global agenda during the G20. The Y20 South Africa was, from the beginning, elitist and exclusionary. The resultant outcome represents a missed opportunity to advance Youth Futures for Systemic Justice in Africa.
Reflections on Youth Engagement and Youth Agency During Multilateral Processes
Paradoxically, the summit’s design ultimately replicated the very tokenism it sought to avoid. We witnessed the process as bound by rigid precedent, confined meaningful participation to a select few official negotiators. The majority of youth, particularly African delegates who represent the world’s largest future youth population, were relegated to a ceremonial role in side events. This exclusionary structure meant African youth had no formal agency in the proceedings, a profound missed opportunity to centre Africa’s priorities on the global agenda during its host year.
The absence of a final communiqué, while intended as a stand against performative diplomacy, ultimately underscores the systemic barriers to meaningful youth influence. For African youth agency and development, this outcome is particularly significant. It demonstrates that even within dedicated youth platforms, the transition from symbolic participation to substantive co-governance remains elusive. The failure to institutionalise concrete mechanisms for youth input, such as a permanent council, means that the vast potential of Africa’s youth continues to be sidelined in global agenda-setting. This not only weakens the legitimacy of such forums, but also delays the urgent, actionable policies needed to harness the demographic dividend and address the systemic injustices facing young people across the continent. The summit’s structure and final outcome highlight a critical gap between the rhetoric of youth inclusion and the practical implementation of youth-led policy, continuity and implementation mechanisms. The Y20 outcome represents a setback for embedding long-term, equitable partnerships for intergenerational fairness in global governance. It’s a failure to adhere to the United Nations Pact for the Future. Adopted at the 2024 Summit of the Future, the Pact for the Future is a wide-ranging international agreement designed to make the global system more effective and inclusive, with a dedicated chapter committing to invest in youth development, protect their rights, and strengthen their meaningful participation at both national and international levels, while also formally considering the needs of future generations.
Reflections on Youth Engagement: From Ageism to Equal Partnership
While the side event session led by the Youth Futures Programme created space for collective reflection and imagination, it also exposed the limitations of many current youth engagement models. Too often, youth platforms fall into a cycle of repetition, replicating familiar formats while expecting transformative outcomes. Across forums, young people continue to raise concerns about tokenism, limited agency, and exclusion, yet structural change remains slow to follow. This inertia is often rooted in subtle ageism, where youth are seen as tokens of participation rather than equal partners with valuable wisdom.
Leaders and institutions increasingly use youth-friendly language, invoking terms such as empowerment and meaningful engagement. However, without tangible mechanisms for influence, these commitments can sound hollow. This tension was visible at the summit, where young participants were often invited to “share reflections,” but with little clarity on how their input would shape decisions or policy direction.
Several critical blind spots emerged, many stemming from this foundational power imbalance:
- Representation vs. Co-creation. Visibility on stage is not the same as power in design. True inclusion requires co-creation and shared decision making authority.
- Language vs. Practice. When institutions adopt the rhetoric of youth without changing their behaviour, engagement becomes symbolic rather than substantive.
- Participation vs. Influence. Platforms like the Y20 encourage participation, but without transparent feedback loops, they risk performativity.
- Consultation vs. Agency. Repeatedly asking young people to restate concerns without action diminishes, rather than builds, agency.
- Tokens of Participation vs. Equal Partners. The most profound shift required is from viewing youth as a demographic checkbox to valuing them as equals, imbued with the wisdom that comes from navigating contemporary crises and innovating at the frontiers of change.
Strategic Value and Pathways Forward
The Youth Futures Lab offered significant strategic value. It translated funded research into practice on a global stage, showing how foresight methodologies can strengthen youth agency and systems thinking in policy spaces. The session amplified African youth perspectives and experiences within a G20 process and demonstrated that anticipatory, participatory approaches can transform youth engagement from tokenistic inclusion to meaningful collaboration. This reinforced IDRC’s position as a project partner of inclusive, forward-looking research that not only studies youth but is also led by them.
Building on these insights, the session also underscored the shifts required to move from participation in principle to genuine power-sharing in practice. To make youth engagement truly meaningful and counter institutional ageism, three shifts are essential:
- Co-creation from the outset. Engage youth in shaping agendas and designing programmes, rather than inviting them to comment on pre-defined plans. This acknowledges their wisdom in defining the problems, not just reacting to solutions.
- Balanced facilitation. Model genuine intergenerational collaboration by giving youth and senior colleagues equal roles in guiding dialogue. This visually and practically establishes them as peers.
- Built-in accountability. Create clear pathways showing how youth input informs policy while holding leaders accountable for learning and acting. This transforms their contributions from anecdotal to authoritative.
Shifting Power: From Listening to Leading
The Y20 Futures Lab illustrated the promise of foresight approaches when employed against the persistence of outdated engagement norms. The true challenge, however, lies in shifting power to ensure youth reflections directly influence outcomes. This requires dismantling the unconscious ageism that relegates young people to the role of listeners-in-training rather than leaders-in-practice. Transformation requires more than amplifying voices. It demands structures where those voices drive action. Like climbing a tree, progress depends on creating space for young people to find their own footholds. They must be supported, trusted, and empowered to reach the higher branches of change, not as beneficiaries of our help, but as equal partners in the climb.
