HEALTH
Data on Youth and Tobacco in Africa
Closing the gap in data collected on youth tobacco use in Africa.
Young people shape trends, markets, and systems. As a result, accurate data on tobacco use among African youth is essential in regional tobacco control efforts. This data is especially important because African countries have some of the youngest populations in the world. In Nigeria, for example, 52% of the population is younger than 18.
Further complicating this dynamic is how prevalent the use of tobacco products is among young people. One cross-sectional study conducted in eight African countries found that in some places more than 36% of adolescents between 13 and 15 years old reported having smoked cigarettes. Therefore, actions taken today will impact not only young people’s future selves, but also the health and wellbeing of their country and region going forward.
Unfortunately, available data on tobacco use among youth is often either outdated (as is the case in Nigeria and Kenya) or doesn’t exist (in the DRC). Therefore, policymakers’ ability to make data-informed decisions to advance tobacco control policies is significantly limited.
Through the implementation of our Tobacco Control Data Initiative (TCDI) program, DG has become increasingly aware of the limited data on adolescent tobacco use. Three specific types of data that we know to be missing are:
- Data about out-of-school adolescents and females,
- Data on certain age groups, and
- Tobacco products included in surveys are limited.
Through the DaYTA program, we are seeking to fill these data gaps as well as any others that are identified in the process. Once this data has been collected and verified, it will be integrated into the country-specific TCDI dashboards and shared with partners and stakeholders.
DG’s Data on Youth and Tobacco in Africa (DaYTA) program—a three-year, $4 million program supported by the Gates Foundation—seeks to advance tobacco control efforts by gathering easy-to-access data on tobacco use among 10- to 17-year-olds in Kenya, Nigeria, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
In collaboration with partners in governments, civil society, and academia, the DaYTA program empowers decision-makers to make timely, data-driven policies that, in turn, can lead to a healthier populace. DaYTA has worked to ensure that data on adolescent tobacco and nicotine use in Africa is accurate and up-to-date. Prior to its inception, most available information on youth tobacco use in Africa came from school-based surveys conducted more than a decade ago. This resulted in major blind spots, including a lack of statistics on out-of-school adolescents, emerging nicotine products, and the rapidly shifting landscape of tobacco use across the continent.
In our first phase, we broke new ground by conducting the first-ever nationally representative household survey on tobacco and nicotine use among adolescents aged 10-17 in the DRC, Kenya, and Nigeria, where data on this issue had largely been missing, leaving an important gap for the governments and partners working on these issues In the program’s second phase, we are extending the approach to three more countries, Namibia, South Africa, and Zambia, and deepening engagement with governments, research institutions, and youth advocates to build trust and identify the data gaps that remain. We will also introduce a new AI workstream to explore how artificial intelligence can help improve the user experience, with the aim of making tobacco control data more accessible and useful to the people working on these issues across the continent.
impact
Our first phase of DaYTA delivered three major outputs: (i) country-specific research reports, (ii) a comparative analysis with its own report, and (iii) new youth-specific pages on the Kenya, DRC, and Nigeria TCDI dashboards. We envision our data and survey findings being actively used to improve national enforcement efforts that deter youth initiation and ultimately prevent tobacco-related illness and death.
For example, our pilot journalist training project, conducted in partnership with Nigerian NGO Renevlyn Development Initiative, provided training on tobacco control reporting to 20 DRC-based journalists, with the objective of equipping them with the skills to engage media outlets early, thereby speeding up the process of amplifying key findings. This will prove especially critical in countries with limited civil society presence, such as Namibia.
In the first phase of DaYTA, the focus countries not only embraced the core content of the survey but also opted into all optional modules, underscoring enthusiasm for and broad support of the program. We hope to replicate this in future implementations as we expand to additional countries.
As the influence from the tobacco industry increasingly crosses borders, regional alignment has become essential to closing policy gaps that weaken national tobacco control efforts. By engaging government, civil society, and advocacy partners across multiple Regional Economic Communities, Development Gateway aims to translate DaYTA’s insights into regionally coherent strategies that strengthen health governance and protect young people from tobacco harms. In doing so, DaYTA moves from generating national data to shaping a coordinated regional response, transforming evidence into a catalyst for systems change across the continent.