Theme: Reclaiming the Democratic Promise – Youth Agency, Digital Resilience, and Combating Kleptocracy in Africa
Date: 26 March 2026
Location: Best Western Hotel, Nairobi, Kenya
Co-Hosts: Nuru Trust Network and Youth for SDGs Kenya
*The GDC Regional Forums 2026 are sponsored by the Charles F. Kettering Foundation.
Background and Regional Context
Across Africa, democratic governance faces mounting strain, with shrinking civic space driven by restrictive laws, security responses, and digital controls limiting citizens’ ability to question power, demand accountability, and engage in public life. Youth across the continent, assert agency through election observation, grassroots movements, online advocacy, and civic tech, reshaping participation beyond traditional structures. Recent elections in Tanzania, Cameroon, and Madagascar show these challenges clearly. Young people led voter education and election monitoring, even as internet shutdowns, false information targeting women and minorities, and restrictions on civil society made their work harder. Upcoming elections in the region offer key tests for safeguarding civic space, enabling safe youth and women’s engagement, and using technology for transparency rather than manipulation.
The Africa Regional Forum 2026 will leverage elections, civic movements, and digital engagement to advance youth agency, women’s leadership, digital resilience, and anti-kleptocracy, aiming to rebuild trust and protect civic space continentwide. This dialogue will interrogate Africa’s evolving democratic landscape. The forum will ground analysis in lived experiences, draw insight from practitioners and experts, and create space for honest exchange on how civic movements, elections, and digital tools can be reclaimed as instruments of accountability rather than control. This convening is not just a conversation, it is a strategic intervention to help shape a more inclusive, resilient, and participatory future for the continent.
Programme:
Forum Objectives:
- Strengthen regional dialogue on Africa’s democratic challenges by examining shrinking civic space youth-led movements, and lessons from recent and upcoming elections.
- Advance regional leadership by enabling African civil society to convene inclusive, locally grounded discussions centered on youth, women, underserved communities, and persons with disabilities.
- Link African democratic realities to global policy processes by situating issues such as kleptocracy, digital repression, and misinformation within the Global Democracy Coalition’s global framework.
- Deliver actionable policy insights and recommendations to inform governments, regional bodies, development partners, and international partners, including the African Union, RECs, UNDP, UN Women, and other UN agencies.
Expected Outputs and Outcomes
- A shared cross-regional analysis of the state of democratic legitimacy in Africa, grounded in lived experiences from youth, women, civil society, and regional actors, documenting common risks, emerging opportunities, and context-specific challenges to civic space and participation.
- A set of youth- and women-led priorities for a renewed social contract, including concrete demands and recommendations on inclusive governance, political participation, and accountability, developed through participatory working sessions during the Forum.
- Practical, action-oriented recommendations on digital resilience, countering misinformation, online safety, and technology-enabled accountability, co-created through problem-solving exercises and real-world scenarios.
- Strengthened networks and collaboration pathways among youth movements, women leaders, civil society organizations, regional institutions, and international partners, enabling coordinated advocacy and follow-up action beyond the Forum.
- Clear inputs and validated findings to feed directly into the Africa Regional Report and the Global Democracy Coalition’s 2026 global report, ensuring the Forum’s discussions translate into policy influence and measurable follow-on impact.
Panelist and Speaker Profiles
Coming soon!