Following-up the efforts presented during the inception of the Africa-Europe Youth Cooperation Programme, an online resource was launched in May 2013 to promote continuous update and monitoring, transparency, knowledge sharing, and capacity-building opportunities for the Africa-Europe Youth Cooperation.

The mapping exercise of existing organisations, opportunities and the need to systematise knowledge has been pointed out since 2007 Youth Summit and reinforced in the 2011 Youth Leaders meeting on Youth Policies. Accordingly, AEYCO worked as a resource centre and as a communication tool for the members of the Africa-Europe Youth Platform.

The general aim of AEYCO was to map relevant actors (institutional stakeholders, youth organisations, networks) in the Africa Europe Youth Cooperation and foster capacity-building and cooperation between Africa and Europe organisations working towards the goals of the Africa-EU Strategy. It aims to be a database covering information about youth organisations active on both continents, the political and institutional framework, information about activities and projects, funding opportunities, pedagogical resources and e-learning, good and inspirational practices, etc.

AEYCO also served the two-fold purpose of addressing both the needs of improving communication among AEYC stakeholders and the communication with the external world. Therefore, different target groups were identified, including: youth in general, youth organisations and institutional interlocutors (the Council of Europe, the European Union, the Africa Union, the United Nations and the States involved).

AEYCO’s objectives were:

• To give visibility to Africa Europe Youth Cooperation and its main stakeholders;
• To centralise useful information such as stakeholders’ agendas, calls and opportunities for partners and interested young people and youth organisations in order to foster cooperation;
• To disseminate AEYC outcomes and priorities, by gathering and promoting academic research, political documents, information on the institutional framework and pedagogical resources;
• To raise awareness about the thematic priorities in particularly the Millennium Development Goals, the successes and shortcomings of the process so far and how the challenges affect young people;
• To develop capacity-building of actors involved in AEYC