The Founder Emmanuel Etim, before establishing PACSDA worked for a combined 15 years as Regional Youth Specialist in the Office of UNFPA Representative to the African Union, ECA and RECs; then as Senior Technical Adviser for Global Partnerships and Programme Implementation at the African Union Commission and then as Regional Coordinator for the Global Fund Advocates Network – Africa. He was very active in shaping the African Common Position towards negotiation by G77 negotiators in the SDGs. At the global level, he was an active member of the coalition of Advocates for domestic resource mobilization as the defining feature of the Financing for Development Conference held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (2014).
During those years, he played transformatory roles that ensured the positioning of Africa’s Human Capital Development on the table of Africa’s highest decision making, including in resource mobilization. Notable of these efforts, include:
- The development, popularization and ratification of the African Youth Charter and lessons learnt used to improve the ratification and domestication rate of other AU instruments at Country level.
- The conceptualization, establishment and operationalization of the African Youth Volunteer Corps as one of the most celebrated flagship programs of the African Union
- The development and domestication of the African Union Youth Decade and its plan of Action 2009-2018
- The unprecedented participation of African Ministers and Institutions responsible for youth at the Mexico World Youth Forum (2010) and at the United Nations High-Level Summit on Youth in New York (2011)
- The planning and results framework, stakeholder engagement and resource mobilization responsible for the successful innovative model applied in convening for the 17th Ordinary African Union Summit of Heads of States and government on the theme “Accelerating Youth Empowerment for Sustainable Development” in 2011.