The Italian Agency for Development Cooperation (AICS) and United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) have signed a cooperation agreement to improve young people's health and capture the demographic dividend in Guinea, Guinea Bissau and The Gambia. The parties were represented by His Excellency Mr. Giovanni Umberto De Vito, Ambassador of the Republic of Italy to Senegal, and Mr. Mabingue Ngom, Regional Director of the United Nations Population Fund in West and Central Africa (UNFPA WCARO).
Through this project, AICS and UNFPA join forces to ensure young people's access to quality health services and promote their empowerment by building and strengthening a leadership framework.
The signed agreement will thus allow the project’s implementation by mobilizing three million Euros over three years. According to UNFPA WCARO Regional Director Mabingue Ngom, “The project in these three countries will help achieve the three transformative results of UNFPA (zero preventable maternal deaths, zero unmet needs in family planning and zero harmful practices), and to implement the African Union (AU) roadmap on the demographic dividend.”
More specifically, the project will address rights and gender equality issues and the possibility of enhancing employment opportunities. The partnership with AICS is a catalytic investment articulated around flagship initiatives such as SWEDD (Sahel Women's Empowerment and Demographic Dividend) and which are already implemented in other West and Central African countries.
The Italian cooperation and the three countries' governments developed the project by collaborating with UNFPA country offices. Italy is one of UNFPA's long-standing partners globally and in the West and Central Africa region. In the region, cooperation with Italy is underway (for an amount of 3,477,000 euros signed in 2019) on "Eradication of Gender-Based Violence in Mali through a holistic and integrated approach to
provide quality services at the national level."
Indeed, Italy is mainly involved with UNFPA in gender-based violence, including female genital mutilation. This agreement operationalizes Italy commitments made in Nairobi in November 2019, during the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the International Conference for Population and Development (ICPD).
Contacts:
Habibou DIA, | Media Specialist | Tel: +221 78 620 45 13 | E-mail: dia@unfpa.org
