By IPS Correspondents
ADDIS ABABA, Oct 28 1999 (IPS)

African youth have demanded access to Information Communication Technologies (ITCs) as a tool to empower themselves.

“We are Africa’s future,” says one youth who attended a conference on the ICTs in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa this week.

At the end of the five-day (Oct 24-28) African Development Forum (ADF), organised by the Addis Ababa-based UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), young people from the Youth Focus and Scholnet Africa Meeting, called on governments to involve them in the implementation of their own training programmes.

“Africa cannot develop if we the youth are not involved,” says the chairperson of Senegal’s Youth Network.

“Many policy leaders tend to see the generation of youth as a problem to be solved,” regretted K.Y Amoako, executive secretary of ECA, who suggested to African policy makers to see the youth as a “major asset for Africa’s development.”

“It is not the fault of youth if their energies and abilities are unnoticed by policy makers. It is more of a lack of creativity by those of us in the policy community,” Amoako said.

“Governments seem often either to ignore youth in the expectation that if they wait long enough youth will become middle aged and the ‘problem’ will be solved, or they delegate youth to a relative backwater in the governmental process,” he noted.

The ADF is seeking ways to get Africa develop the use of Information Technology as a driving force for development in the 21st century.

“We simply cannot talk of an information age in Africa without understanding that young people will be more vital to the success of that development than any other generation,” said Amoako.

The youth proposed a ‘SchoolNet’, a continent-wide initiative, to drive developments of ICT for youth in individual countries. Schools, youth institutions and community centres were recognised as identifiable vehicles in order to achieve their aim.

According to Mukama Frank, representative of the Youth Association for Human Rights and Development in Rwanda, being involved in decision-making process would “enhance our responsibility to strive for achievement. There is a great need to link African Youth in ICTs.”

“Although Africa has a vision, what it doesn’t seem to have is the access to the resources to bring this vision to fruition,” said Sara Menker, a youth leader. “And that access can only be established if the individual governments are willing to allocate budgets solely for the promotion of ICTs.”

It will, however, be hard to realise some of those demands. After all, across much of Africa, millions have never made a telephone call let alone use the internet. Statistics from the Technology Centre for Africa says, only two countries, Seychelles and South Africa have more than one percent of its population using the internet.

Even for Seychelles, the figure is hardly impressive, with 1.272 percent of the Indian Ocean Island using the internet.

Less than one percent of people in Africa use the internet, although the continent is home to 12 percent of the world’s population.

According to statistics, only 0.006 percent of Burkina Faso’s population use the internet. Gambia has 0.12 percent, while diamond-rich Botswana 0.069. Tele-density for main telephone lines per 100 inhabitants in Ethiopia is 6, Kenya’s one, while Reunions has 35.6 telephones for every 100 people.

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