Representatives of 14 African countries convened in Rwanda from 27^th to 29^th September 2016 to discuss how Rwanda’s YouthConnekt initiative can be applied in their respective countries.

YouthConnekt programme was initiated in 2012 by the Ministry of Youth and ICT in partnership with One UN Rwanda and other partners, to empower young people and connect them to the public, private sector and the civil society for economic opportunities.

Speaking at the opening of the Regional YouthConnekt planning workshop,  the Minister for Youth and ICT, Honourable Jean Philbert Nsengimana, much-admired the move by African countries to pick interest in the initiative.

“I want to thank all the participants for the efforts made to come here and learn from what Rwanda has done. We are here to make the impossible possible, and I believe that when the private sector meets the civil society, government, international organisations and development partners, not only to talk but to walk the talk, then miracles happen,” he noted.

Minister Nsengimana said that YouthConnekt has been a platform to bring youth together to connect, empower and educate themselves, among other things, and that his dream is to have it grow into a global network.

“This started as an idea but at a small level, but today we are here to make it work elsewhere, and I don’t see why it can’t be a global initiative because there’s still a gap or a deficit in terms of what young people can achieve,” he said.

The platform has also been used at national, local and decentralised level to push for stricter accountability and transparency from elected officials, according to the UN Resident Coordinator, Lamin Manneh.

“Beyond the several awards and recognitions gained by the YouthConnekt Rwanda Initiative within and beyond One UN, the simple but innovative approach has supported and uplifted many “reluctant entrepreneurs”, for whom self-employment is not a choice, but rather the viable way to make a living as there are few jobs in the formal sector,” Manneh told participants.

Mariano Nkogo, who attended the workshop from Equatorial Guinea, said that YouthConnekt initiative is a great tool to link the Civil Society Organisations and private sector to the government to be able to address most of the challenges they face.

“Specifically, in our country where there’s less connection between the Civil Society Organisations and the government, we can use it to increase our understanding between each other, hence solve the youth unemployment issue, being one of the biggest issues that our young people face,” he noted.

Countries that were present at the workshop were Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Congo-Brazzaville, Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Lesotho, Sao Tome, Zimbabwe, Swaziland, Liberia and Uganda.