Nardos Bekele-Thomas: “Youth challenge is Africa’s greatest concern”

A conversation with Nardos Bekele-Thomas

In her first exclusive interview, Nardos Bekele-Thomas, CEO of AUDA-NEPAD, talks forcefully about the imperative to place youth at the centre of development and provides ideas on how this can be achieved.

Ethiopian Nardos Bekele-Thomas has been the CEO of the African Union’s Development Agency (AUDA) for only six months but is already getting a feel for what her job entails – which often means having to be in several places, sometimes at the same time. In the past week alone, prior to our interview, she had arrived in Egypt for COP27 from Japan where she was for the JICA Annual Meetings and was on her way to Indonesia for the G20 meetings to then finish a gruelling travelling schedule in Niamey for Africa Industrialisation Week. More engagements are rolling in as we speak.