Article type
Abstract
Background
Despite good intentions and strong initiatives, the gulf between evidence synthesis production and use remains largely unsolved. We cannot accept this status quo if we are serious about finding solutions to the world’s challenges. Unemployment in Africa is one such challenge for which solutions are urgently needed: Africa’s youth unemployment rates are as high as 65% in South Africa and even 80% in Djibouti. Millions of dollars are being invested in attempts to provide dignified and meaningful work for young women and men and evidence is urgently needed to inform these efforts. A partnership of evidence organizations from across the continent are working to provide the evidence to meet this need.
Objectives
The objectives of this partnership are to use innovative synthesis approaches to deliver up-to-date, trustworthy, and affordable evidence on solutions for tackling youth unemployment, and to ensure that the evidence is responsive to the contexts of those who need it.
Methods
We have drawn on the strong collaborative connections across Africa’s evidence ecosystem to form a partnership led by the Pan-African Collective for Evidence, combining responsive evidence services with the model for collaborative living evidence. Together we are building an up-to-date evidence base of rigorously-synthesized living and local evidence, including the incorporation of indigenous ways of knowing.
Conclusions
Innovative collaborative and synthesis approaches which build on and expand existing partnerships, whilst also advancing synthesis methodologies, have the potential to have meaningful impacts on some of the world’s biggest challenges. We will present lessons from our work to support decision-making to tackle youth unemployment, both in terms of effective interventions, and in relation to the collaborative evidence synthesis approach that we are implementing.
Despite good intentions and strong initiatives, the gulf between evidence synthesis production and use remains largely unsolved. We cannot accept this status quo if we are serious about finding solutions to the world’s challenges. Unemployment in Africa is one such challenge for which solutions are urgently needed: Africa’s youth unemployment rates are as high as 65% in South Africa and even 80% in Djibouti. Millions of dollars are being invested in attempts to provide dignified and meaningful work for young women and men and evidence is urgently needed to inform these efforts. A partnership of evidence organizations from across the continent are working to provide the evidence to meet this need.
Objectives
The objectives of this partnership are to use innovative synthesis approaches to deliver up-to-date, trustworthy, and affordable evidence on solutions for tackling youth unemployment, and to ensure that the evidence is responsive to the contexts of those who need it.
Methods
We have drawn on the strong collaborative connections across Africa’s evidence ecosystem to form a partnership led by the Pan-African Collective for Evidence, combining responsive evidence services with the model for collaborative living evidence. Together we are building an up-to-date evidence base of rigorously-synthesized living and local evidence, including the incorporation of indigenous ways of knowing.
Conclusions
Innovative collaborative and synthesis approaches which build on and expand existing partnerships, whilst also advancing synthesis methodologies, have the potential to have meaningful impacts on some of the world’s biggest challenges. We will present lessons from our work to support decision-making to tackle youth unemployment, both in terms of effective interventions, and in relation to the collaborative evidence synthesis approach that we are implementing.