Mastercard Foundation partners with Afrobarometer to explore youth priorities in Africa

The three-year, multi-country partnership will produce high-quality data on the experiences, preferences, and priorities of African youth to help inform policy action

Nairobi, Kenya, April 12, 2022 — The Mastercard Foundation today announced a three-year partnership with the pan-African research network Afrobarometer to explore the experiences, preferences, and priorities of African youth. Under the partnership, Afrobarometer will conduct youth surveys in six African countries—including Kenya, Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda, Senegal, and Ethiopia—to uncover young people’s perspectives on a range of social and economic issues. The partnership will produce high-quality data to help inform policy as well as the Foundation’s own efforts to enable opportunity for young people under its Young Africa Works strategy. Alongside surveying African youth and disseminating findings to policy shapers, the partnership will invest in developing the next generation of African researchers and analysts through capacity strengthening and mentoring.

“Listening is a fundamental value of the Mastercard Foundation and listening to young people is especially important. As we seek to enable 30 million young people to access dignified and fulfilling work by 2030, we want to ensure that our efforts are grounded not in our assumptions about what young people want and need, but in the realities and aspirations they articulate for themselves,” said Tade Aida, Head of Research at the Mastercard Foundation.

“We are delighted and honoured to partner with the Mastercard Foundation to advance our shared objective of preparing young people in Africa, especially young women, to secure dignified and fulfilling employment. This partnership is particularly timely as it reinforces Afrobarometer’s renewed commitment to strengthen the research and analytic capacities of young Africans. We look forward to a very productive partnership with the Foundation in the next three years and beyond,” said Dr. Joseph Asunka, CEO of Afrobarometer.

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Contact Information for the Mastercard Foundation:

Julie Waiganjo
Lead, Executive Communications, Public Affairs and Communications
+254 785 432 111

jwaiganjo@mastercardfdn.org

About the Mastercard Foundation

The Mastercard Foundation works with visionary organizations to enable young people in Africa and in Indigenous communities in Canada to access dignified and fulfilling work. It is one of the largest, private foundations in the world with a mission to advance learning and promote financial inclusion to create an inclusive and equitable world. The Foundation was created by Mastercard in 2006 as an independent organization with its own Board of Directors and management.

For more information on the Foundation, please visit: www.mastercardfdn.org

About Afrobarometer

Established in 1999, Afrobarometer (AB) is a non-partisan, pan-African research network specializing in public attitudes surveys on democracy, governance, the economy, social life, and other issues of societal concern, such as climate change. It is the only survey organization by, for, and with Africans and the leading source of data on public attitudes about issues affecting men, women, and children on the continent. Through an extensive and growing program of analysis and communications, AB makes its findings accessible, visible and policy relevant.