Some interesting things to note:
An ILO study on tackling youth problems showed that young people are currently the most educated but that developed countries are unable to generate job opportunities for them. The consensus is that there is a miss match between what the youth are studying and what job skills are actually needed to be employed. There is a need to improve the systems that determine what skills sets are needed because as it stands, too many youth are looking for jobs in sectors that are already overpopulated, ignoring sectors that, although don't make that much money, are vital to the economy.
Seeing how more than half of the continent's population is made up of Youth, one of the questions asked was, "How can we take advantage of the African Youth bulge?".
The group offered several thoughts on this:
1. The question of taking advantage of the African Youth Bulge lies at the National level; The Capacity of people is important.
2. Quick Questions: Why are we here? What have we done wrong/right? If we can respond to these questions, then we should find out what trends we need to engage in.
3. Dec 17, 2010 – A Tunisian man lit himself on fire. What was his rational around it? Did he know that his actions would create a revolution?
4. Innovations will solve problems not politics or policy.
All this revolves around Education and therefore there is a need to focus on interdisciplinary education because it is the future of education.
So what should the youth be doing to be more active?
• They should be investing themselves (e.g. Pick up a book, network with like-minded youth, etc)
• Youth should be willing to volunteer and it is a practical means to gaining experience.
• Most importantly, the youth should follow their passion.
The last session of the day was on ICT for development in Africa and this session focuses on:
Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are one of the most important and potent forces that continue to shape the 21st century, impacting the way people live, learn and work. ICT application continues to transform the fields of medicine, engineering, commerce, governance and even agriculture. It has provided the means to leapfrog some the infrastructure challenges that Africa faces in linking up communities for development. Yet the majority of today’s young people in Africa still live on the wrong side of the digital age. Internet penetration is still relatively low though mobile phone access has improved significantly in the last decade. Increasing the penetration of Internet services for all segments of the society especially among the youth and in rural communities will in no doubt increase their critical thinking abilities as they are able to peer learn with youth across the globe. This will also connect places of low development to places of massive development to learn measures that work and those that do not work in developing youth empowerment policies for their full integration in the development process.
I was very interested in the ICT for Development of Africa session. Overall, I was disappointed because I felt it was centered too much on the panelists’ firms and their achievements. There was little or no discussion on the development of Africa through ICT. Mr. Agambire, the founder of RLG said on the issue of Gender Equality that, RLG encourages women to work in assembly lines of factories. While that is well and good, restricting women solely to factory work does not promote women’s rights development. What about women in Senior Management? What about women as software designers? As progressive, innovative firms and as youth advocating for development, the glass ceiling should be something that is broken. Women’s rights are just as important as any other
