Within the UNESCO Global YouthMobile Initiative, the project kicked off in Kabul, Afghanistan, to help build capacities of young Afghan graduates and University students to develop mobile based software solutions to resolve local issues.

With the support from United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Office in Kabul, the project is implemented by TechNation, a Kabul-based technology firm, TechDera, a community technology center, in collaboration with TechWomen Afghanistan, a network of women in technology, and TechLabs, a software development house. 

A Project Opening Ceremony was held in Nov 4, 2015 at TechNation headquarters, in Kabul, attended about 50 guests including 70% of female trainees. Speakers included Mr. Sayed Habibullah, UNESCO Programme Officer for Communication and Information, TechNation top management, program participants, partners and mentors.

Omar Mansoor Ansari, TechNation’s President, introduced the program and discussed the importance of the program. “Mobile applications market is not only revolutionizing the software industry, but it also has a profound impact on the national economy, this program is a great learning opportunity addressing challenges arising from shortage of qualified mobile apps developers in Afghanistan.” Ansari said.  

Mr. Sayed Habibullah, spoke about the UNESCO worldwide YouthMobile Initiative and training. “UNESCO has been supporting Afghanistan on different areas including Freedom of Speech, access to information, knowledge societies and development of Free and Open Source applications. This is not the first time, we have supported the Regional Open Source Conference of Central Asia in 2011, and are committed to continue supporting initiatives that create and support Knowledge Societies in Afghanistan” said Mr. Habibullah. He added: “We are very pleased to see 70% of the participants in this program are women. This was beyond our expectations”. 

30 Afghan girls and boys will participate in this Mobile Apps Development training Program, which includes a hands-on practical training during 4 weeks and a yearlong internship program covered by Technation. This is a unique program and the first of its kind in Afghanistan, where young people gain practical and theoretical knowledge.

They will learn about Apps development, how it is designed and made functional and usable and user-friendly. Each participant will conceive, develop and deploy a mobile application, which will be possibly made available on major App Stores. 

The UNESCO YouthMobile Initiative builds on the experience of many worldwide initiatives that introduce young people to computer science programming (learning-to-code) and problem solving (coding-to-learn). It also seeks to build on experiences targeting young women who are vastly underrepresented in this field. Finally it builds on the consideration that for millions of young people, the smartphone in their pocket is a very powerful computer, it will be their only computer, and they use it for nearly every aspect of their lives: communicating, learning, taking pictures, and playing games.

With this new initiative UNESCO and its partners strive to provide young people with the high-level skills and confidence to develop, promote, and sell locally relevant mobile apps that solve local issues of sustainable development and open employment and entrepreneurship opportunities.