Advancing Youth-Centred Digital Ecosystems in Africa in a Post-Covid-19 World

"[T]he pandemic has revealed the need to develop resilient and sustainable systems and economies that leverage digital technologies as a tool for youth empowerment"

On the African continent, where almost 60% of people are under the age of 25, the COVID-19 crisis has exacerbated preexisting inequalities, deepening young people's intersecting vulnerabilities. Despite the fact that many of them live in hard-to-reach areas with no access to electricity, young people in sub-Saharan Africa have in many cases used digital tech to transform their lives and communities in the wake of the pandemic. This Overseas Development Institute (ODI) publication is the first of two to glean the findings and insights from a two-day online global consultation, held in July 2020, exploring young Africans' use of digital technologies in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. Specifically, the paper discusses the topics of the first day of the consultation, when 130 participants engaged in text-based discussions on Platform4Dialogue to delve into youth activism and community engagement and to ask which digital skills are needed for youth to meaningfully engage in shaping digital societies.

To begin, the paper looks at the multifaceted barriers driving the youth digital divide in Africa. Poor infrastructure restricts youth access to the internet, and affordability limits access to devices and data. This is especially true among young women - e.g., they are more likely to have to borrow devices from male household members, who often control and monitor their use. Other barriers are related to the lack of technology programmes catering to local contexts and languages, with one participant mentioning the need for more collaboration between technology developers and local linguists. There are also concerns around accessibility and the digital inclusion of people with disabilities. Finally, to boost demand it is important to consider barriers beyond cost - e.g., lack of awareness of the benefits of information and communication technologies (ICTs). Participants suggested that greater investments and incentives to telecoms and the private sector are needed to provide opportunities for change.

Participants went on to examine how COVID-19 has changed technology use by young people in sub-Saharan Africa, covering:

• Impact of COVID-19 lockdowns on youth lives and livelihood - While youth have been disproportionately affected by the effects of COVID-19, digital technologies have allowed them to gather health information, keep in touch with their support networks, and access mental health information and support. Online activism in particular has increased as a result of social distancing measures. These developments have accelerated the need for youth to acquire the relevant skills and knowledge to fully participate in their societies.
• Youth civic participation, activism, and technology - For example, social media gives youth the power to raise awareness about their community priorities; as citizen reporters, they can connect their community with national and international institutions. Young people have also used intergenerational digital storytelling to build trust and shift narratives between youth and older generations. By applying a combination of online and offline approaches, youth-focused interventions can maximise their reach. Structural barriers to community engagement with digital technologies do remain, however.
• Youth technology use in the (mis- and dis-) information age - African youth have a role to play in the lifecycle of disinformation: from its production to its transmission, reception, and reproduction. For youth to be equipped with the appropriate digital citizenship skills and to engage in the digital space safely and actively, policies facilitating youth digital engagement in both creative and participatory ways must be tailored to young people's own local contexts and reflect their lived experiences and aspirations.
• Youth-led digital innovations: The power of "challenges" - During the pandemic, challenges (e.g., competitions, hackathons, and ideation campaigns) enabled digitally savvy youth to create innovative solutions. If accompanied by structural changes to address systemic inequalities, youth-oriented initiatives could play a role beyond the pandemic to help respond to education and employment challenges on the African continent.

Having provided this context, the report outlines the skills African youth need to navigate a connected, increasingly digital world. As noted here, across different countries and community contexts, concepts such as digital citizenship, digital literacy, and new media literacy are being used to group skills that youth need to make better use of digital technologies, as well as to organise them under educational programmes that can be implemented in formal, informal, and connected learning environments. Some examples provided during the consultation include: the Work-Integrated Learning (WIL) concept, which embeds academic learning within its application in the workplace, and the Uganda-based organisation Fundi Bots, which aims to bridge technological divides between the classroom and the real world.

In short, digital-enabled interventions and programmes aimed to equip youth with 21st-century skills should consider designs grounded in creative and participatory approaches, be tailored to young people's local contexts, reflect their lived experiences and aspirations, and go beyond short-term outcomes. Young people's views must be better incorporated into national decision-making through fora such as youth councils and youth parliaments to progressively bridge the generational divide. Special attention should be paid to vulnerable groups, including young women, young people with disabilities, youth migrants, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth and their intersecting vulnerabilities and needs. Innovative and unconventional partnerships rooted in indigenous youth knowledge must be designed to find rapid solutions and the financing needed to realise them.

In conclusion: "Covid-19 has provided a glimpse of the need for ethically designed and implemented digital technologies to provide education and employment opportunities for youth as well as empowering them as future leaders. This means that lessons emerging from the unprecedented times we are experiencing should serve as ongoing and future changes for policy and practice to accomplish youth-centred digital ecosystems."

This report is published by the Youth Forward Learning Partnership, led by the ODI's Digital Societies programme with Participatory Development Associates in Ghana and Development Research and Training and other partners in Uganda. Youth Forward is supported by the Mastercard Foundation.