Information and Communication Technology

1.1.8 ICTs and Youth 

Young people can harness the power of ICTs to assure opportunity, empowerment and inclusion for all. Capacity-building initiatives need to be broadened from a narrow perception of ensuring ICTs for education and targeting only primary and secondary school students. Ef forts need to be made to provide re-skilling and training of the youth to ensure participation in a workforce that is increasingly demanding ICT literacy. Income-generating initiatives should be encouraged to promote adoption and innovation among the youth . By ensuring that the future generations are taken into account in ICT policies and e-strategies, nations can ensure that ICT applications have a constant pool of knowledge resources to tap in the future, while also encouraging innovation and creativity.

The creation of websites and e-forums has enabled on-line youth communities to be built across the nation. These youth communities convey and share their thoughts and views on social, political and economic issues without requiring or relying on mainstrea m media that tend to marginalize their voices. In addition, on-line youth communities have fostered on-line entrepreneurship, which enables networking among members. The lack of financial and marketing resources of youth is addressed by easy-to-use on-line networks of contacts and databases of information.