Accelerating achievement for Africa’s adolescents

Contemp Soc Sci. 2025;20(5):885-920. Epub 2025 Oct 7.

ABSTRACT

By 2050, one in four people in the world will live in Africa. The region’s adolescents are our present and future but need effective services to support their holistic health and wellbeing, advance their education, allow them to flourish, and protect them from adversity. This paper reviews evidence for a new concept of ‘development accelerators’: interventions that can help achieve multiple Sustainable Development Goals simultaneously. Across 26 studies, the most frequently identified accelerators were government-provided social protection, positive parenting including good supervision of their adolescents, adolescent-friendly healthcare and childcare, positive gender norms, and psychosocial support. These have been shown to be highly cost-effective, giving substantial returns on investment, especially when applied in combination.

PMID:41778213 | PMC:PMC12952748