The 2016 regional finale of the televised Voix des Jeunes ("Young Voices") competition will be held at the African Development Bank's (AfDB) headquarters in Abidjan on Friday, February 3, 2017. This finale will bring together the winning teams from Senegal, Guinea and Côte d'Ivoire.

The Voix des Jeunes competition is an initiative of the Social Change Factory (SCF) civic leadership centre, founded in Senegal. The goal is to form young Africans into change agents with a social conscience and the ability to find solutions, who want to help write Africa's story and build its future. Voix des Jeunes competition highlights hundreds of successful solutions with socio-economic implications.

For the finale, each three-member team will receive a theme related to social progress. Starting with their assigned theme, each team must identify two specific subjects and articulate them for discussion. Above all, the challenge is to offer solutions that will have a positive impact on peoples' lives, to analyse those impacts and present them during the competition. This year, the themes for the finale focus on three of the Bank's development priorities, the High 5s.

The competition's goal is to develop solutions to socio-economic problems that will blaze a trail of change in the pan-African ecosystem. Launched successfully in Senegal in 2015 before being rolled out in Côte d'Ivoire and Guinea this year, "Young Voices" could extend to 16 countries on the continent.