Africa CDC has a bold strategy for youth health, launched last year and now entering its first full year of implementation. The question Namibia, and every member state, must answer is whether the political will and funding exist to match it.
We write this together, a Namibian doctor and a Kenyan medical student, because this article is itself a small demonstration of the Africa CDC Yes! Health Strategy 2025-2028 in practice.
Two young African women, both supported by Africa CDC’s youth programmes, both in Mombasa for the ninth RHNK Pan-African Adolescent and Youth SRHR Scientific Conference, the continent’s largest sexual and reproductive health gathering that took place from 2 to 5 June.
We returned carrying two things: genuine pride in what African youth are building, and a productive unease about whether our institutions are serious enough to sustain it.
THE WOMAN WHO BUILT THIS STAGE
This conference exists because of one woman’s vision: Nelly Munyasia, executive director of the Reproductive Health Network Kenya (RHNK), who has built the premier Pan-African platform for adolescent and youth (sexual and reproductive health and rights) SRHR.
For Dr Nafuka, it was a return to a stage that changed the trajectory of her work: a panellist last year, a presenting author this year, with a Namibian flag flying in the conference hall.
A conference founded on the belief that African youth deserve a serious, scientific platform has become exactly that, and its 10th edition is on the horizon.
THE STRATEGY AND THE MOMENT OF RECKONING
The Yes! Health Strategy 2025-2028 is the first continental strategy of its kind: a standalone commitment making young Africans, over 65% of the continent’s population, the central architects of Africa’s health security.
Its five pillars span youth engagement in governance, physical and digital collaboration spaces, youth-led partnerships, workforce development, and most critically, sustainable financing for youth-led health programmes.
Chrys Kaniki, Africa CDC’s senior technical officer for strategic youth programmes and the strategy’s architect, opened the plenary with the line framing everything: “If a health strategy does not mention youth agency, then it is just a suggestion.
Youth engagement is not a box to tick, it is a strategic investment in Africa’s health security and future prosperity.”
That reframing positions youth inclusion not as a moral gesture but as a technical necessity: you cannot design effective health services for a population you refuse to involve in designing them.
WHAT PANELLISTS DEMANDED
Grace Omoto is a Kenyan student doctor and Africa CDC intern, she moderated the Africa CDC Youth Plenary Session at the 9th RHNK Conference. Photos: Contributed
The plenary, moderated by Grace Omoto, an Africa CDC intern and herself proof of the strategy’s talent development pillar, featured youth leaders whose words read as an accountability checklist for every health ministry.
Dr Blen Getahun, one of 50 Digital Health Champions of the Youth in Digital Health Network, argued that the strategy “provides a framework to institutionalise youth leadership and participation tier by tier.”
Her digital health platform, Letena Ethiopia, is exactly the innovation the strategy is designed to amplify.
Saddam Biwa, director of operations at Namibia’s One Economy Foundation and representative of the #BeFree Movement, named the core risk: “If ideas do not come from young people themselves, we risk missing the realities, aspirations, and solutions that matter most to them.”
Rebecca Cherop of the Africa CDC youth advisory team for health delivered the line that stayed with us: “The question is no longer whether young people deserve a seat at the table.
“The question is whether our institutions are willing to share the pen.”
Sharing the pen means co-authoring national health budgets, not ceremonial consultation.
A NAMIBIAN RECKONING
We do not write from a distance.
Through the Africa CDC Bingwa Plus fellowship, the youth-led partnerships pillar in practice, Nafuka piloted BloomBox, a gamified offline board game delivering SRHR, mental health and legal literacy education across Windhoek schools and campuses.
The data from 1 722 young people across 16 sites speaks clearly: 92% felt safer discussing SRHR in a gamified setting than in a clinic, 65% gained new legal literacy around sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) reporting protocols, and zero aggressive incidents were recorded.
A Namibian solution, validated at the continent’s largest youth health conference.
With Biwa on the same panel, Namibia had two organisations in Mombasa, the direct result of Africa CDC investing in Namibian youth.
The question is whether Namibia’s own institutions, the Ministry of Health and Social Services, domestic funders, the private sector, will match that investment.
Our country faces the same triple threat driving this continental agenda: rising SGBV, new HIV infections among adolescents, and teenage pregnancies.
We have people building solutions to all three.
We need those solutions permanently resourced, not perpetually piloted.
THE STANDARD WE MUST NOW MEET
Kaniki was himself recognised in Mombasa for his mentorship of emerging young leaders across Africa.
But the truest tribute to that mentorship is not an award, it is member states returning home and changing their budgets and planning frameworks to reflect the strategy he built.
The Yes! Health Strategy has earned the right to be taken seriously. But if a health strategy does not mention youth agency, in its language, its budget lines, its implementation timeline, then it is just a suggestion.
Namibia, and every country whose flag flew in Mombasa, can do better. The young people already doing the work deserve nothing less.
– Dr Tuwilika Nafuka is a Namibian medical doctor and Chevening scholar and Grace Omoto is a Kenyan student doctor and Africa CDC intern.
