AFRICAN CHILDREN’S SUMMIT 2025: WHY THIS SUMMIT MATTERS NOW MORE THAN EVER

By C Anzio Jacobs

• The Africa Children’s Summit 2025 is not just an event, it is an invitation to reimagine democracy and development through the eyes of children.
• The summit, which takes place in Johannesburg in April, ensures that African children are recognised as political actors, knowledge holders, and visionaries.
• In focusing on democracy, AI and emerging technologies, climate change, gender-based violence, and violence against children, the gathering acknowledges the layered and intersecting crises shaping the lives of African children.

As the world reels from the multiple overlapping crises of war, climate breakdown, widening inequality, and the unchecked rise of artificial intelligence, it is crucial we ask what kind of world are we creating for our children.

More importantly, what kind of world do children themselves envision – and how do we listen?

The Africa Children’s Summit will be taking place in Johannesburg, South Africa, from 4 – 7 April 2025 and will offer a powerful and timely response to these questions.

This is not just another event; it is a radical invitation to reimagine democracy and development through the eyes of children.

In a moment when the global order is being questioned, when even powerful blocs like the G20 scramble amidst planetary crises, African children are preparing to gather, speak, and lead.

The summit is both symbolic and strategic. It draws its strength from a growing movement that asserts the right of children not only to be protected but to participate meaningfully in shaping the policies and decisions that affect them.

At its heart is a commitment to child-led processes, ensuring that African children are not relegated to the margins, but are recognised as political actors, knowledge holders, and visionaries in their own right.

South Africa as host

The significance of hosting this summit in South Africa cannot be overstated.

As a country with a hard-won legacy of democracy, South Africa is uniquely positioned to nurture the voices of children in the struggle for a more just, equitable, and peaceful future.

From the liberation movements that birthed the nation to its contemporary role in multilateral forums such as the G20, South Africa holds both the symbolic weight and strategic capacity to centre child participation at continental and global levels.

At a time when G20 conversations are increasingly removed from the realities of the majority world, the Africa Children’s Summit is a reminder that transformative ideas can – and do – merge from the grassroots.

The summit is not an effigy of adult diplomacy dressed in colourful posters. It is a child-led, deeply intentional gathering that integrates robust safeguarding practices, child-centric programming, and standard operating procedures developed with and by children.

The summit’s themes are prescient.

In focusing on democracy, AI and emerging technologies, climate change, gender-based violence, and violence against children, it acknowledges the layered and intersecting crises shaping the lives of African children.

Many of these crises are inherited, but they are not irreversible.

African children are survivors

Children across the continent are already engaging these issues in their schools, communities, and online networks. The summit brings these engagements into conversation with each other and offers a platform for transnational solidarity and collective action.

Africa’s children are not a monolith. They are survivors of displacement, leaders of climate strikes, coders, poets, caregivers, and caretakers of ancestral knowledge.

In an era dubbed the Fourth Industrial Revolution, they are already navigating the paradox of unprecedented technological advancement amidst persistent inequality.

While AI promises breakthroughs in education and healthcare, it also threatens to widen the digital divide, commodify childhood, and further entrench surveillance and bias, we will not conquer these challenges unless children are part of the conversation.

At the same time, the lived experiences of African children cannot be divorced from the global context.

From Gaza to Sudan, from refugee camps to borderlands, children are caught in the crossfire of violent conflict, not only internationally but in our backyard, too. They are not only losing access to education, safety, and community, they are losing their futures.

This summit is a statement of refusal. It refuses to accept a world where children are invisible casualties. It insists on a world where children are the architects of peace.

This is not the first time African children are convening.

The summit builds on previous regional dialogues, national pre-summits, and digital platforms facilitated by the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund and partners across the continent.

In every iteration, children have demanded to be taken seriously – not through tokenistic panels, but through co-designed methodologies, safe engagement spaces, and binding commitments from duty bearers.

Not a moment but a movement

The 2025 Africa Children’s Summit, therefore, is not a moment – it is a movement.

It is part of a continental shift towards intergenerational justice, one that acknowledges the wisdom of children and the failures of systems that exclude them. It is a call to adults – policymakers, donors, civil society, and the private sector – to not only listen but to act.

If we are to realise Agenda 2063, the African Union’s blueprint for an integrated, prosperous, and peaceful Africa, we must begin with children. Not just as beneficiaries, but as co-creators.

As the world gathers in elite spaces to discuss “inclusive growth” and “shared futures”, the Africa Children’s Summit reminds us that another world is not only possible, it is being imagined by children in languages, songs, apps, and ideas we have yet to fully comprehend.

It is our duty not to speak for them but to make way for them to be Seen, Heard, and Engaged in Education and all matters affecting them. The Africa Children’s Summit 2025 is that space, and South Africa is ready.

·   C Anzio Jacobs is the Africa Children’s Summit project lead.