Tech Innovations for Empowerment and Sustainable Development
August 17by Ruhamah Ifere
A 2024 analysis has found that every minute of the day, people around the globe create 3.5 billion snapchats, share 66,000 photos and videos on Instagram, send 231 million email messages, watch 625 million videos on TikTok, and stream 2.47 million videos on YouTube.
This is an astonishing and constantly expanding amount of information. In 2024, the amount of data in the world was estimated to be 147 zettabytes.
As a young civic tech innovator, I believe it is essential to spotlight the work of Young Tech Innovators and how their innovations address issues that have been identified in the society.
International Youth Day was celebrated on August 12, 2024. I was particularly intrigued by the theme for the Day – “From Click to Progress: Youth Digital Pathways for Sustainable Development”.
For us at Trully Verify Africa, Digital pathways for sustainable development involve empowering young people with Media Literacy and Fact Checking skills so they would be well positioned to combat disinformation and become informed and active participants.
To scale up such innovative Tech solutions, we need the support of critical stakeholders. This includes the Government, Private institutions, CSOs, individuals and young people to translate these ideas into sustainable solutions.
Creation of sustainable policies: Policy is the tool by which the ‘Battle for Africa’ can either be lost or won. Africa needs more policies that will create enabling environments for young people to gain Tech skills and become empowered as positive change agents thriving in an ever-evolving world.
Fundings and Grants: These cannot be overemphasized. These fundings and grants tailored to support tech innovations can help to scale tech solutions of young innovators and amplify the reach globally.
Spotlighting of innovative ideas: What Spotlighting of Innovative Tech solution does is that it serves as a metric for the impact that has been achieved and shines the torchlight on the gap that still needs to be bridged. A good example is the spotlight on Trully Verify Africa as one of the Top 10 Innovators in Africa by the European Union Youth Sounding Board of Nigeria and Malawi. This selection was made from 338 applications from over 30 countries in Africa.
The potential of young people can be maximised for sustainable development.