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Healthy Cities for Adolescents
With Healthy Cities for Adolescents, young people shape healthier, more responsive cities as equal partners in decisions affecting their lives.
Senegal
A young population in a rapidly changing country
Senegal has a large and growing young population and is undergoing significant demographic, economic and urban change. Cities are expanding, digital technologies are becoming more important and new economic opportunities are emerging. Yet access to opportunities remains uneven across places and communities, shaped by socioeconomic conditions and the quality of institutions and governance. How Senegal and future generations manage these transformations will have important implications for social cohesion and political stability.
Challenges
Creating pathways to opportunity
For many young people, access to quality education, practical skills and meaningful pathways into work remains uneven. A changing economy is creating new possibilities, but also increasing the importance of skills that connect learning with employment and entrepreneurship. Strengthening young people’s participation in decisions affecting their lives and communities is equally important as cities continue to grow and change.
Cities
Exploring where to build for the long term
Fondation Botnar has gained initial experience in Senegal through individual initiatives, but unlike in some of our other focus countries, we do not yet have an established city anchor. From 2027, we will explore different urban contexts, working with local actors and young people to understand existing strengths, priorities and opportunities for collaboration. This will inform where we make a long-term commitment.
Learning from young people and local actors to shape future partnerships.
Approach
Starting by listening and learning
Our future work in Senegal will start by learning from the people, organisations and institutions already active in different cities. Rather than beginning with a predetermined model, we will explore where Fondation Botnar can add value and gradually develop long-term partnerships around young people’s rights, agency, and opportunities, informed by local priorities, evidence, and experience.
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