YTF was invited to attend the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting of the New Champions “Summer Davos” this year in Dalian, China. The theme of this year’s meeting was “Meeting the Innovation Imperative”. The meeting has become the premier gathering in Asia of leaders of multinational corporations, governments and the communities of the New Champions, comprising the next generation of leaders and fast-growing enterprises that are shaping the future of business and society.
Njideka Harry, YTF’s CEO, spoke in the “Distribution of Digital Wealth” panel addressed questions around how the growing digital divide can be addressed in the area of fostering entrepreneurship and employment.
Njideka shared her perspectives based on YTF’s work to provide youth with information and communication technology (ICT), entrepreneurship training and life skills. To further address the issue, she stressed that skills training for the knowledge economy is imperative as:
- Africa is urbanizing rapidly. The population is growing fast and may double within a generation. There are 200 million young people in the world’s youngest region, many living in young democracies, many unemployed.
- No nation becomes great when majority of her nationals are mainly idle, semi-skilled or outright unskilled.
- The ICT wave could help build human capital, it could open up new jobs and transform education and healthcare.
- Replacing the skills lost when Africans migrate overseas costs the continent more than $4 billion a year in Western expatriate salaries.
Mrs. Harry concluded saying that this generation of “digital natives” has enabled YTF continually review and enhance our training curriculum to stay current with the demands of his population. “The young people today are not looking for one way interaction; they multi-task, consume on several channels at once, require information assistance rather than technical support. They are the now and we are right there with them”, she stressed.
From left to right: Moderator, David Kirkpatrick, Founder, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Techonomist, Techonomy Media, USA Calvin Chin, Founder, Transist, People’s Republic of China; Young Global Leader Njideka Harry, Founder and Chief Executive, Youth for Technology Foundation (YTF), Nigeria; Social Entrepreneur Mario Martin, Chief Strategic Alliances Officer, Telefónica, Spain Jorge Soto, Founder, D4, Mexico; Technology Pioneer Jay Sullivan, Chief Operating Officer, Mozilla Corporation.
