Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, 8 September 2026 (ECA) – The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), through its Sub-Regional Office for West Africa, and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), in collaboration with the Ministry of Planning and Development of Côte d’Ivoire, through the National Population Office (ONP), on Monday, 7 September 2026, launched in Abidjan a technical validation and operationalization meeting for the Digital Monitoring Platform for the Implementation of the African Union Roadmap on Harnessing the Demographic Dividend in Africa.
The meeting, taking place from 7 to 9 September, marks an important milestone in the finalization of the pilot phase of the platform jointly developed by ECA and UNFPA, with the objective of providing Member States with a common tool to better measure progress, identify challenges and strengthen evidence-based decision-making.
The opening ceremony brought together Mr. Souleymane Diarrassouba, Minister of Planning and Development of Côte d’Ivoire; Ms. Ngoné Diop, Director of ECA’s Sub-Regional Office for West Africa; Mr. Saidou Kabore, UNFPA Resident Representative; Heads of United Nations agencies in Côte d’Ivoire; representatives of the eight pilot countries in West Africa – Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo – as well as experts from ECA and UNFPA.
Opening the meeting, Mr. Souleymane Diarrassouba, Minister of Planning and Development of Côte d’Ivoire, emphasized the strategic importance of demographic and socio-economic data in development planning.
“Demographic and socio-economic data must become, for our continent, a genuine strategic infrastructure for development planning, so that we can measure better in order to understand better; understand better in order to make better decisions; make better decisions in order to act better; and act better in order to improve the living conditions of our populations.”
The Minister stressed that the digital platform is an instrument for strengthening the link between data and public action:
“It is precisely this virtuous chain between data, knowledge, decision-making and action that the digital platform for monitoring countries’ efforts to harness the demographic dividend, which we are going to operationalize, aims to consolidate.”
Speaking at the ceremony, Ms. Ngoné Diop, Director of ECA’s Sub-Regional Office for West Africa, recalled that the continent’s demographic dynamics place young people at the heart of Africa’s development prospects.
“Africa’s demographic profile is characterized by the extreme youthfulness of its population. Nearly 60 per cent of Africa’s population is under the age of 25. In sub-Saharan Africa, approximately 70 per cent of the population is under the age of 30. West Africa shares this same characteristic.”
For ECA’s Director for West Africa, this demographic reality calls for substantial investments in human capital and in public policies targeting young people.
“These figures clearly show that investing in Africa’s youth is not only a social necessity: it is an imperative for the economic transformation and sustainable development of the continent, and particularly of West Africa,” said Ms. Ngoné Diop.
She emphasized that the availability of reliable data and its effective use are essential to enable countries to better anticipate the needs of their populations, guide investments and measure the results of policies implemented.
Jointly developed by ECA and UNFPA, the digital platform is a regional tool for monitoring, reporting and knowledge sharing on the implementation of the African Union Roadmap on Harnessing the Demographic Dividend.
The platform will enable Member States to:
monitor progress in the implementation of the Roadmap;
collect, analyse and visualize relevant data;
produce standardized national monitoring reports;
identify gaps and areas requiring priority interventions;
share experiences, good practices and lessons learned among countries.
The platform covers the four strategic pillars of the African Union Roadmap: health and well-being; education and skills development; employment and entrepreneurship; and governance and youth empowerment.
Over the three days of the meeting, representatives of the eight pilot countries are testing and validating the platform’s functionalities, strengthening their technical capacity to use it, and contributing to the finalization of its updated version ahead of its wider deployment.
The ECA-UNFPA initiative comes at a time when Africa’s demographic dynamics offer the continent a historic opportunity to accelerate economic growth and sustainable development.
The platform seeks to help transform this demographic opportunity into tangible results by strengthening the use of data in the formulation, monitoring and evaluation of public policies.
Issued by:
Communications Section
Economic Commission for Africa
PO Box 3001
Addis Ababa
Ethiopia
Tel: +251 11 551 5826
E-mail: eca-info@un.org