Pan African Youth Institute
Introduction
The Pan African Youth Institute sets out an ambitious vision in which the whole of government, private sector and civil society would support young people to realise their potential, it sets out how locally and nationally in all sectors we would work together to make sure that young people have the supportive relationships, strong ambitions and good opportunities they need if they are to succeed and how we should focus on supporting success rather than preventing failure.
The Pan African Youth Institute is a youth-led community change program of the Pan African Chamber of Commerce whose mandate is to fulfill the African Agenda for Youth.
Although positive youth development is increasingly influential in the field of youth programming, core knowledge and competencies for youth workers continue to be defined.
Like never before, Africa is witnessing a highly increasing number of youth-led focused initiatives and organizations, while this can be a good development in itself, the quality and developmental output from such organizations leave much to be desired. This is simply because the quality of input determines the quality of output.
Many youth organizations in Africa are in dire need of the requisite organizational knowhow to achieve high-level impact and growth.
The Pan African Youth Institute is a capacity-building training program of the Pan African Chamber of Commerce designed to strengthen the institutional building and operations of youth-led organizations in order to become more professional, impactful, and sustainable in their work of youth development and nation-building.
Vision
An inclusive society that values and supports the full engagement of its youth in the civic, social, economic and cultural life
Objectives
- To sharpen competencies/skills that will make youth organizations more professional.
- Enhance the capacities of the partner organizations for strategic development by strengthening their monitoring, evaluation, and learning processes.
- Highlight strategies for effectively marketing and branding youth organizations.
- Enlighten youth organizations on how to achieve qualitative impact.
- Expose youth organizations to useful resources, toolkits, and other opportunities that can help them build sustainable youth organizations.
- Strengthen youth representation on issues that affect their well-being for nation-building.
- Foster relations between young people, government, the private sector, and development partners at different levels.
- Increase the capacity/organizational/technical skills of groups/organizations working in the youth-led sector so that they can deliver quality programming more efficiently and effectively.
- Increase the capacity of the youth-led sector as a whole and contribute to its knowledge base.
- Improve the quality of youth work.
- Increase the capacity of youth, with a focus on the inclusion of young women, to play meaningful roles in the sustainable development of their communities.
- Increase the capacity of African youth-serving organizations and institutions to design, implement, and evaluate programs of excellence for the youth.

Thematic Areas
- Leadership development.
- Youth entrepreneurship.
- Democracy and good governance.
- Political participation and community development.
- Economic empowerment.