“We had made a case sometime in 2016 at the capacity building symposium organised by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) that the investments in USPF (universal service provision fund) across Africa instead of being channelled wholly and exclusively to ICT infrastructure should be dedicated to ICT skills development, in that if someone is investing $10 million in ICT infrastructure, 10 per cent of the money should go for ICT skills development, especially targeted at the youths. “They are the ones who will use the infrastructure to innovate, create and develop the things that will make the future happen, but as long as we don’t make that investment, then it means that you’ll put a piece of ICT equipment in an office and nobody is using it because the skills are not there. “A typical phone, for example, can do a lot for us but because the knowledge of the use of the phone is not available, meanwhile we’ve invested a lot of money buying this device, we limit ourselves to just making calls and sending text messages,” he said.According to him, there’s a critical need to invest in building ICT capacity for the young people.

Source: The Guardian May 14, 2018 04:07 UTC