Dear friends,

I bring you very warm greetings of the season and thanks for your various efforts at promoting universal access to sexual and reproductive health and rights for all in Africa. Despite the many worthy accomplishments of the year 2015 especially the successful negotiations of the global goals for sustainable development, African Girls Summit on Ending Child Marriage in Africa and COP 21 much still remains to be done to advance sexual and reproductive health and rights in Africa.

We are therefore renewing our commitment to ensuring the promotion of universal access to sexual and reproductive health and rights on the continent. African Federation for Sexual Health and Rights (AFSHR) identifies fully with the aspirations, goals and objectives of the Africa CSOs Coalition on Population and Development (ACCPD) especially the full implementation of the ICPD POA and the Framework of Actions for the follow-up to the POA beyond 2014.

The 7th Africa Conference on Sexual Health and Rights, 8-12 February, 2016 Accra, Ghana with the theme “Realizing Demographic Dividend in Africa: the Critical Importance of Adolescents and Youth Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights” is a very bold initiative to align global sexual and reproductive health developmental trust with Agenda 2063- African Peoples Aspirations for Development.

We are very grateful to the Government of the Republic of Ghana our host country and all her agencies, our dynamic conference Patron H. E. Dr. Nana Lordina Dramani Mahama, Curious Minds Ghana our host organization and 2016 conference secretariat, our conference partners especially United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), Ford Foundation, International Women’s Health Coalition (IWHC), and National Organising Committee.

We are very grateful to all who responded to our call for abstracts and our profound gratitude goes to all our abstract reviewers some of whom have been with us through most of the conferences to date. We are pleased to honour our reviewers by publishing their profiles on the conference website. We hope some of them will oblige us their services as session moderators during the conference.

Accra beckons to all who are keen to advance sexual and reproductive health and rights to take advantage of this conference to meaningfully engage. Whilst we are not offering sponsorships to the conference, we want to assure all stakeholders that the discussions and interactions will bring value to their knowledge and careers.

The destiny of our continent is our collective responsibility thus we encourage synergy of African Governments, African Union, Regional Economic Communities, Academia, African CSOs, and peoples through promotion of sustainable development by principles of human rights and dignity for all.

On behalf of all the conference key partners and national organizing committee I look forward to welcome you to Accra 2016. Have a great festive season and an outstanding year ahead.

Uwemedimo Uko Esiet
Convener
African Federation for Sexual Health and Rights