Côte d'Ivoire: Abidjan launches digital platform to track demographic dividend across eight West African countries

Since September 7, 2026, in Abidjan, eight West African countries—Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea, Mali, Niger, Senegal, and Togo—have been testing a digital platform designed to monitor the African Union's Roadmap on the Demographic Dividend. The technical validation meeting, running until September 9, was organized by the Sub-Regional Office for West Africa of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), and the Ivorian Ministry of Planning and Development, via the National Population Office (ONP), according to a UNECA press release. Minister Souleymane Diarrassouba advocated for demographic data to become 'strategic infrastructure' for planning. UNECA office director Ngoné Diop noted that nearly 60% of Africans are under 25, and about 70% of sub-Saharan Africans under 30. Jointly developed by UNECA and UNFPA, the tool will collect and visualize data, produce standardized national reports, and identify intervention priorities across four pillars: health, education, employment-entrepreneurship, and youth governance. For the eight pilot governments, this shared tool aims to ensure reliable public policy monitoring and guide investments before a broader rollout to other member states. This initiative comes as several participating Sahelian countries (Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger) undergo political transitions and severe budget constraints, making the availability of reliable data all the more critical for arbitrating limited public resources. Historically, transforming the demographic dividend into effective growth requires a simultaneous decline in fertility and an increase in human capital investment—an equation still unfinished in the sub-region.