Youth vs. Apathy: ICEDEG-Africa Dialogue Pushes Reforms to Restore Trust in Democracy

The Advisory Chairman of the Iustum Center for Democracy and Governance (ICEDEG-Africa), Nana Kwasi Asuman-Frimpong, has emphasised the institution’s commitment to producing practical, evidence-based policy solutions that will directly influence governance and strengthen democratic participation across Africa.

Speaking ahead of ICEDEG-Africa’s Virtual Policy Dialogue Roundtable on the 2026 Mid-Year Budget Review at Asaase Breakfast Show on Wednesday 17th June, 2026, Nana Asuman-Frimpong said the initiative was deliberately designed to move beyond identifying challenges to generating actionable recommendations for policymakers.

According to him, the experts assembled for the dialogue were selected with a clear purpose. “The experts that have been put together have been put together mainly not to focus on problem-driven questions, but to focus on solution-driven questions,” he said.

He explained that the Advisory Council readily endorsed the initiative because of growing concerns about declining public confidence, particularly among young people, in democratic governance across the continent.

“That is why at the Advisory Council we approved of this project when the management brought it before us,”;he stated.

Nana Asuman-Frimpong noted that recent findings from international and continental governance assessments point to an urgent need for institutions to reconnect citizens with democratic processes. “When we look at our trajectory and we’ve been looking at the data from the recently published Global Peace Index and the data that Afrobarometer has consistently been churning out, you notice that the people, particularly the youth of Africa and their interest in democracy is waning,” he said.

He attributed part of the challenge to the disconnect between policymaking and grassroots realities. “Policy development hasn’t really been driven by research, by data and from the grassroots,” he observed.

The ICEDEG-Africa Advisory Chairman stressed that the policy dialogue seeks to reverse that trend by ensuring citizens and experts contribute meaningfully to policy formulation.

“The main interest of this programme really is not to narrate problems. The problems may be there, but the main interest is how far has the Budget 2026 performed so far? How has it influenced [the economy]?” he explained.

He indicated that discussions and recommendations emerging from the forum would be consolidated into a formal policy document. “Therefore, we put all of this together cumulatively into a policy brief that will inform policy development,” he said.

Drawing a distinction between ICEDEG-Africa’s approach and conventional civil society engagements, he said many organizations simply compare existing policy documents without proactively shaping future policies.

“Other civil society organizations would wait for the Mid-Year Budget Review to also be ready and then they just oppose how the budget performed as against how the Mid-Year Budget Review has also been presented,” he said.

“What is different with this programme is that we are not only seeking to compare policy documents from policy developers; we are rather seeking to influence policy because it is the influencing of the policy that is what will shape and build trust and interest in our policy developers and save the democracy we are having,” he added.

He further disclosed that a key outcome of the dialogue would be the submission of a policy brief to relevant state institutions, particularly the Ministry of Finance. “The outcome of this programme, properly so called, is to develop a policy brief which will be submitted to policy developers, particularly the Ministry of Finance and other relevant agencies,” he stated.

Nana Asuman-Frimpong expressed optimism that the recommendations would be considered during the preparation of the Mid-Year Budget Review. “We expect that they will find space in the Mid-Year Budget Review,” he said.

He argued that this expectation is justified because many communiqués issued after policy roundtables often fail to generate tangible impact. “This expectation is grounded on the fact that a lot of the time when we see communiqués from some of these roundtables, the communiqués sound more like reported speeches,” he further added.