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In sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) today, about 80% of the population is under 30 years old. This percentage continues to rise, but employment opportunities for young people are severely limited. The structural-adjustment policies of the 1980s and 1990s have led to reductions in the absolute number of jobs available in the public sector. The private sector in most African countries has grown slowly and has been unable to absorb the large numbers of school leavers and graduates who annually flood the market. In fact, the informal sector accounts for up to 80% of gross domestic product in some African countries.

However, the bright side of economic restructuring and accelerated change is that it also presents youth with new opportunities. Among these is the emergence of informal sectors and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), both of which demand new types of skills. Enterprise and entrepreneurship education and learning, a fairly new field, is responding to a call for new attitudes, knowledge, and skills, preparing young people to meet the emerging demands of labour markets and livelihood opportunities.

One of the most promising areas for youth is information and communications technologies (ICTs). ICTs are for everyone, young and old, but perhaps it is the young who must lead the way. The International Development Research Centre (IDRC) has been working on ICT issues since the 1970s and has helped many African institutions establish bibliographic centres and information retrieval systems. IDRC was an early supporter of PADIS (Pan African Documentation and Information System) at the Economic Commission for Africa, based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and currently supports the Publication and Information Centre, HealthNet, and an electronic network, all based at Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda.

In 1996, IDRC made a decision to use ICTs more effectively to accelerate development in SSA. Instead of focusing on our traditional partners — universities, government ministries, and research institutions — we decided to work directly with target communities to ensure that they would be more immediately brought into the development process. In this context, we launched the Acacia Initiative as an international effort to empower SSA communities to apply ICTs in their own social and economic development.

In all probability, ICTs are here to stay, and they will increasingly become a part of everyday life in Africa, as has happened in other parts of the world. The youth of Africa will be prime players in linking the continent to the information highway. One of the objectives of this workshop¹ was to explore ways to make this happen.

The three main objectives of Acacia are as follows:

To examine how SSA communities can use information and communication to solve
local social and economic development problems;






To learn from and record this knowledge and disseminate it widely; and






To involve others (international organizations, donors, the private sector,
national governments, and nongovernmental organizations) in using ICTs to increase
community access to information and communication.

In all this, IDRC wants to ensure that youth have a prominent role, not only as users of information (or as people being acted on), but also as decision-makers in the processes of development in their own communities. Our focus in this initiative is on assisting rural communities to become a part of national development processes by facilitating their access to information and knowledge and by providing them with opportunities to share their own insights, knowledge, and experience with their urban compatriots. IDRC also puts special emphasis on the involvement of women and girls.

The whole world is on the brink of a major reconceptualization of how we live and work together. Countries that only a decade or two ago seemed remote now have the potential to be active partners in global development. ICTs offer African youth the opportunity to bring their views and perspectives to a wider audience. The three areas of focus endorsed at this workshop — SMEs, health, and land use and environmental management — seem to me to offer particularly good potential for youth input. But more important, ICTs offer African youth the opportunity to actively participate in the development of their communities and countries by sharing their knowledge, enthusiasm, and creativity with their fellow countrymen and countrywomen.

Eva M. Rathgeber
Regional Director, Eastern and Southern Africa
International Development Research Centre

Document(s) 1 of 11