YouthMobile for sustainable development in South Sudan
Lydiah Gachungi, UNESCO, at YouthMobile workshop launch in Juba - CC BY SA
The first UNESCO YouthMobile Workshop launched successfully on Tuesday 12 August 2014 with 43 students learning the basics of mobile apps programming for sustainable development. Organized by UNESCO in partnership with Zain South Sudan, the Workshop is being facilitated by the Dev School of Kenya and hosted at the College of Computer Science and Information at the University of Juba.
The training workshop aims at empowering youth with the high-level skills and confidence to develop and promote locally relevant mobile applications, contributing to self-generated and viable employment opportunities in the growing ICT industry both nationally and globally.
This new type of capacity building for mobile app development comes at a time when prolonged conflict in South Sudan has left many young people highly fragmented and lacking access to employment opportunities.
The overarching global objective of the UNESCO YouthMobile Initiative is to have empowered at least 25,000 young people worldwide, particularly young women, with the skills to develop, promote and sell at least 5,000 locally relevant mobile applications by 2017.
The initiative builds on the experience of many worldwide projects that introduces young people to computer science programming (learning-to-code) and problem solving (coding-to-learn). It also seeks to show young people that computing power can be used for directly addressing personal challenges or the problems faced by their local communities.
Marcha Chumo, Director of the Dev School. CC BY SA
Martha Chumo, Director of The Dev School emphasized during the 10-day workshop that “we will focus on developing thematic Android applications on literacy, peace and unemployment, and will be followed by intermediate then advanced levels.”
Salah Khaled, UNESCO Country Representative to South Sudan is hopeful that through the YouthMobile training workshops, young people will be able to confidently enter the job market. “By innovatively utilizing the potential that is in a mobile phone, the young people can create businesses and also acquire skills that give them an edge in IT jobs in the local, national or international market.”
Araba Victoria, one of the young South Sudanese women attending the 10 day training, commented on the importance of such workshops. “I thank UNESCO and Zain for supporting this training on mobile applications development to improve our programming skills and enable us compete in the national job market and with the rest of the world.”
These sentiments were echoed by Boboya Nicholas Duesuk, who is also an attendee of the training workshop. “All along, we have been longing for a training that exposes us young South Sudanese to what is happening in the changing world and this has opened a great opportunity for me to become more relevant in the job market”.
Zain and UNESCO Representatives. CC BY SA
Zain South Sudan, being the main UNESCO partner in this initiative, provided 20 Android Mobile phones with 2GB on each phone in support of the 10 day training.
Speaking during the launch, Mr. Robbert West, Zain South Sudan Chief Commercial Officer informed the participants that capacity building is one of the main strategic thrusts of Zain and through the telecommunications, the company is focusing on empowering South Sudanese youth with the necessary skills to develop a more productive future in their chosen fields.
“In a country like South Sudan, where educational and vocational institutions are still in the early stages of establishment, a program such as the YouthMobile Initiative is instrumental in helping develop the next generation of contributors to the national economy,” said Mr. West.
Martha Chumo, Director of the Dev School believes that there are opportunities for UNESCO and ZAIN to collaborate further. Namely, in the development of an innovation hub for young people in South Sudan to further their newly acquired skills and incubate the applications created during training workshops.
For the University of Juba, this initiative has also opened a new opportunity to enrich its curriculum in tandem with the global innovations.
Lado Kenyi (left) addressing trainees. CC BY SA
Speaking during the launch of the Youth Mobile Apps development in South Sudan, Dr. Lado Kenyi, Dean of the Computer Science College at the University of Juba said, “The University of Juba is committed to incorporating this type of training into the university’s curriculum by establishing a module that will provide the opportunity for continuous mobile applications training. This will ensure that students graduating from such courses are awarded with certificates that will be recognized in the job market.”
In two years’ time, the project aims to have 1,200 South Sudanese youth trained on mobile application development through the globally renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s App Inventor curriculum.
The 10 day training of 43 South Sudanese will close on Friday, 22 August with Zain awarding the best mobile application developed from the workshop.
To find out more on this initiative please follow us on twitter #JubaYouthMobile
Openly-licensed photos from the Workshop will be available at https://www.flickr.com/photos/125945777@N02/
To find out more about the UNESCO YouthMobile Initiative, follow us on Twitter @YouthMobile_ or visit our website: www.youthmobile.org
UNESCO is organizing similar YouthMobile workshops in Kenya, Nigeria, and Lebanon.
Trainees in Juba at YouthMobile Workshop launch. CC BY SA
