AfCFTA Secretariat, YALDA announce AfCFTA youth creative competition winners

Winners of the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Youth Creative Competition across three different categories, namely; essay, infographics and animation were announced on Wednesday.

By Stephen Enoch

The competition was organized by the nonprofit Youth Alliance for Leadership and Development in Africa (YALDA), in collaboration with the AfCFTA Secretariat, African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), the International Trade Centre (ITC) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

The creative competition themed: ‘The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA): What is in it for young Africans?’ sought to bridge the information gap about the AfCFTA among Africa’s young people and foster a bottom-up synergy in terms of the policy formulation and implementation of the AfCFTA by utilizing inventive youth-oriented solutions for speedy popularization of the Free Trade Area (FTA) among young people.

In this direction, the eligible youth competitors were asked to produce creative contents that inform and educate young people about the AfCFTA and its tremendous benefits for Africa’s teeming youth population. Consequently, winners across the various categories of the competition received a cash prize of $1,000 each while second and third runner ups were awarded $500 and $300, respectively, alongside additional non-monetary prizes.

Yusuf Daya, director in charge of AU/AfCFTA relations and trade policy at Afreximbank, said the competition had exposed the innovative ideas of African youths adding that Africa’s young people will constitute the next generation of African industrialists and innovators and therefore enable the AfCFTA to achieve its vision of promoting structural and economic transformation of Africa.

“It is our youths that will inject the necessary economic dynamism and act as a catalyst for economic transformation and sustainable development which the continent desperately needs. Nurturing this resource through education, information, training, access to finance and partnerships is essential to ensure the full benefit of an integrated Africa are realized and we are able to not only deliver on ‘The Africa we Want’ as stipulated in Agenda 2063 but also the Africa our youths deserve,” Daya said.

Winner of the animation category, Boluwatife Aderounmu, a trained medical doctor and animator, said participating in the competition helped him acquire a deeper understanding of the AfCFTA. “I internalized the knowledge I learnt about the AfCFTA and transformed it into this animation which I felt other African youths can look into and understand the concept of the AfCFTA. There is no better time for African youths to leverage our huge population for the betterment of Africa than now.”