Download logoThe United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, Sub-Regional Office for West Africa in partnerships with the Consortium Régional pour la Recherche en Economie Générationnelle (CREG) is organizing a regional workshop on Demographic Dividend Sensitive budgeting (DDSB) on 4 – 7 July 2023 in Niamey, Niger on “Alignment of the Demographic Dividend Monitoring Index (DDMI) to the functional budget and performing the budget sensitivity analysis” to build capacity of five selected Member States, i.e. Benin, Burkina Faso, Niger, Togo, and Senegal in assessing the investments needed for capturing the demographic dividend.
This regional hands-on technical workshop will allow the finalization of the remaining technical step of the DDSB process and follows the regional capacity building workshop held in Cotonou, Benin on 22-26 May 2023 on the Retropolation of the DDMI for the period 2001-2020 for the above Member States.
Therefore, performing the alignment of the retropolated DDMI series with the demographic dividend-related functional budget as well as the budget sensitivity analysis will strengthen the capacities of the Member States in defining the financial allocations needed for appropriate investments to capture the demographic dividend as envisioned in the 2017 African Union (AU) roadmap on harnessing the Demographic Dividend through four (4) key pillars, i.e., Education, Health and well-being; Job creation and entrepreneurship, and Governance and Youth empowerment. The DDSB tool has also the potential to track the realization of both the agenda 2030 and the African Union agenda 2063 for sustainable development.
At the end of the workshop, it is expected that with the technical support of CREG and ECA, the five participating countries will produce their respective DDSB analytical reports. Subsequently, ECA and CREG in collaboration with the countries’ teams will develop the country specific policy briefs to inform the policy decision makers and members of Parliament on the imperatives of adopting a budgeting framework sensitive to demographic dividend.
In this regard, national policy dialogues will be convened in the five pilot countries to present the findings from the DDSB technical process and their policy implications with particular emphasis on the economic and development returns of investing on harnessing the demographic dividend. Ultimately, the objective of these tailored policy dialogues will be to influence the budget allocation through the appropriation, adoption, and a fully-fledged implementation of the DDSB process throughout the respective Member States’ budget cycles.
The DDSB program is anchored in the ECA support to Member States to implement the 2017 African Union roadmap on harnessing the demographic dividend through massive investments in youth.
Distributed by APO Group on behalf of United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA).
