The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Regional Bureau for Africa today launched an initiative to support African countries to prevent and respond to the growth of violent extremism through a development lens.
We must confront the issues that drive many African youths away from productive lives and draw them to mayhem and destruction,” said Abdoulaye Mar Dieye, UNDP’s Africa Director at the high-level discussion and launch event of Preventing and Responding to Violent Extremism in Africa: A Development Approach, co-hosted by the Permanent Mission of Sweden to the UN. “The risk we face is not just dramatic reversal of the recent development gains in Africa but a stunting of development prospects for decades to come.”Violent extremism has had a devastating social and economic impact across the continent. Groups such as Boko Haram in Nigeria and Al Shabaab in Somalia have forced hundreds of thousands of people from their homes, increasing instability in the region.
