Africa’s preeminent and independent youth conference, Breaking Down Borders Africa Youth Summit, celebrates its 5^th anniversary in 2021. Launched in 2017, the Summit brings together youth leaders from across the African continent and the diaspora, and to date has engaged delegates in over 60 countries on the continent and beyond. The Summit aims to drive robust conversation and build collaborative networks made up of African youth in social and commercial entrepreneurship and leadership. 

By earGROUND

To mark the 5^th anniversary of this distinguished platform, the BDB Africa Youth Summit 2021 will be hosted in multiple countries across the African continent, for the first time moving away from South Africa since its inception. 

While Botswana will play main host to the physical summit, Zimbabwe is one of four other countries that will plug in as co-host of this exciting hybrid gathering of young leaders, whose illustrious alumni include Zimbabwe’s own Plot Mhako  and former Deputy Prime Minister Prof. Arthur Mutambara 

This is a great honor to co-host the BDBA Summit. The conference is playing a critical role in driving forward critical and positive conversations amongst the African youth who are largely disenfranchised. The innovative, networking and collaborative spirit and opportunities the event presents is what Zimbabwean youth need right now.

Plot Mhako

The annual three-day event takes place in May, which has been declared Africa Month by the African Union. Besides Zimbabwe, other countries that will host satellite events include Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa. 

“We founded BDBA to be a collaborative and inclusive platform for African youth, by African youth. Our mission has and will always be to host a platform where African youth set the agenda for deliberation on the renewal and sustainable development of the continent. As the BDBA Youth Summit celebrates its 5^th Anniversary, we found it important to further position the Summit as an accessible platform that young from different regions of the continent can take ownership of and we are so excited that our network in Botswana, representing the SADC region, have shown such an overwhelming commitment to hosting this year’s Summit 2021.”

Nthabiseng Modjadji, BDBA Co-Founder

Previous speakers of the Summit include founder of Jibilika Dance Trust and Multiple award winning activist Plot Mhako, Nigerian entrepreneur Adebola Williams, Kenyan political activist and photo-journalist Boniface Mwangi, and South African youth activist and author Zulaikha Patel. 

The 2021 Breaking Down Borders Africa Youth Summit will be hosted from the 25th to the 28th of May, under the theme “Young people in Africa: Collective Participation and Power Beyond the COVID 19 Pandemic”.