Youth Transforming Technology Development in East Africa

The Kenya National Commission for UNESCO (KNATCOM) organized a first of its kind regional mobile apps development training workshop for 50 Youths from East Africa countries i.e. Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Tanzania. The regional workshop is part of UNESCO’s continued efforts of promoting the application of ICTs to enhance the quality of and access to education, including the stimulation of production, sharing and access to open educational resources.

The   workshop was organized by eMobilis Mobile Technology Institute which is a training institution founded in 2008 not to mention it’s the first of its kind in Sub Saharan Africa – it focuses on training individuals on Mobile Software Development, as well as Network Infrastructure Management and has trained over 2,500 students. Their programs range from Entrepreneurship Programs at mlab East Africa, Developer Hackathons and Competitions e.g. Ignite Hack and Pivot East, Boot Camps conducted at Kibera Resource Center, JKUAT and University of Nairobi to Cisco Academy Courses, Windows Phone, Android, HTML5 and USSD courses offered at our facility to students from across Kenya and from as far away as Zambia and Rwanda. Its mission is to tap local talent, offer scholarships to allow skills based technology training, empower youth through entrepreneurship and facilitate the creation of innovative mobile solutions for African problems. The workshop was sponsored by KNATCOM with boarding facilities at AICAD for 5 Days.

The training is part of UNESCO Youth Mobile Initiative whose goal was to empower young people make use of technology and also create their own application. The project focused on women and young girls to bring the gap of Women in Technology and involve them in developing applications. One of the elements of the Youth Mobile Initiative was ensuring that there is good open licensed training material for youth use which eMobilis also participated in.

The event was graced by Dr Evangeline Njoka Secretary General KNATCOM pledging  that UNESCO;s  support the best initiatives, and  award the best apps, that will be adapted globally whilst  also looking for more partners in the industry to support the initiative . Dr Evangeline also thanked the Uganda, Rwanda and Tanzania National Commissions for UNESCO for their participation  ‘UNESCO will to work with  KNATCOM & eMobilis in finding a way to support developers with great ideas and initiatives that come from the workshop, and create channels to take technology further  and change in the world through technology’ says Jaco Du Toit – KNATCOM

Christine Maingi information and communication director at KNATCOM  noted that alarming  that very few girls are taking up this program, girls and women are part of the initiative too and they need to take up the opportunity as well, she also said that we need to enhance our own local mobile apps and stop using foreign ones. National Commissions are the focal points for all UNESCO activities and programs in their respective countries. The Kenya commission just like in East Africa and globally has a unique role to play in strengthening the foundations of lasting peace and sustainable development. It also instrumental in advancing UNESCO agenda in Kenya in the areas of Education, Natural Science, Social and Human Sciences, Culture, Communication and Information. It’s for this reason that KNATCOM in line with their strategic plan, 2014-2018 plan to build the capacity of youth on Mobile application development on annual basis so as to stimulate youth involvement and empowerment.

The winners were emerged from Uganda with their uniquely designed app Dot event. The app seeks to inform numerous number of willing educators in form of hubs while bridging gap between youth and the hubs among many other objectives    they were each awarded with a Samsung Galaxy J5. Kenya had to settle for Second position was Kilimo mobile application is a sustainable agriculture program that supports and empowers farmers across the country through mobile technology. The goal is to reduce poverty levels through sustainable agriculture by empowering farmers and improving participation of all the stakeholders across the region.   They were each awarded with a Samsung Galaxy Neom. Management of Social Transformations (MOST) App from Uganda came in third position. The app seeks to promote equality and diversity. Users get to air out any social injustice.