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The use of ICT to strengthen youth employability in the developing world ought to be pursued vigorously. To be clear: ICTs aren't the only route to improving the employability of youth, but it should be used as a key tool because of the anticipated growth potential and youth employability crisis experienced by most societies in the developing world.

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Youth constitute more than half of the world’s population, of which 81 million are unemployed− 7.8 million more than the number in 2007− a disproportionate number as youth only make up a third of the world's working population. No where is youth employability constraints worse than in the developing world, where a majority of the world’s youth live.

This is a huge development challenge. Clearly, a deeper engagement with youth is needed to foster more sustainable futures. That must start with efforts to equip young people, a demographic force, with marketable ICT skills because of the immense employment and wider economic opportunities ahead.

Barely 15% of the half a trillion dollar global IT-enabled services market, which is expected to treble to between US$1.5 and 1.6 trillion by 2020, has been tapped, according to the World Bank. Developing regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa reap the least rewards from this unprecedented opportunity for economic growth and skilled jobs. The fact that they experience higher youth and overall unemployment levels should serve as an impetus for creating an enabling environment for ICT innovation and expansion. It is a paucity of ICT skills across the continent that cause it to lag so far behind amid rapid growth in the telecoms and services sector. This reduces the potential returns on ICT investment, restricts the quality of service delivered and stifles new investment across a continent in need of rapid and sustained new enterprises.

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As the World Bank's flagship ICT initiative for Africa, the New Economy Skills for Africa Program: Information and Communication Technology (NESAP-ICT), puts it: “The lack of skilled manpower is a binding constraint to realizing the potential of the sector. Even India which has 30% of the global labor supply suitable for the industry expects a shortfall of 0.8 to 1.2 million skilled workers for its ITES industry by 2012.” The onus is therefore upon Sub-Saharan Africa and other developing parts of the world “to boost its "talent" profile so as to benefit from this burgeoning market opportunity”.

That talent profile depends on the nature and quality of training and education that the developing world's youth are exposed to. It is my view that a range of incentives and curricular reforms are needed to ensure that young people are suitably trained to acquire jobs in the ICT sector and explore entrepreneurial opportunities.

The current mode of education in most developing countries is outmoded. Significant curricular reform is needed, including the creation of advanced ICT curricular modules to supplement and be integrated into basic ICT courses for youth in schools, youth centers and technology hubs. By improving the curriculum in developing countries with enhanced ICT focus in the fashion proposed, skill levels and employability among young people will improve. Furthermore, these employability skills are likely to enable more young people to venture into entrepreneurial activities.

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The mere mention of agriculture conjures, for many, outmoded images of a backbreaking industry. It's an image that holds true in some places where few farmers utilize contemporary farming technologies and techniques.

But ICTs play an increasingly important role in agricultural value chains. Though important, cellphones aren't the only ICT being used to improve agriculture. ICTs encompass radios, digital cameras, geographic information systems (GIS), cloud computing, tracking mechanisms, etc.

Five ways in which ICT can help tackle key challenges in agricultural value chain development are:

1. Pricing and weather information systems
2. Applications (apps) to help buyers manage transactions with the thousands of small-scale farmers who supply to them
3. Mobile banking and apps that facilitate quick payments
4. Initiatives to expand the reach of farm extension services through phone, radio, video and sometimes all three
5. SMS or text messaging campaigns for enabling environment advocacy

The increasingly important role of ICTs in agriculture can help change the face of the sector (from outmoded to cutting edge). In fact, it should form part of the larger thrust to attract more young people to the sector. In a resent blog I contend that there's a strong link between ICTs and general youth employment. Agriculture is no exception. ICTs offer employment opportunities in the sector that are both attractive to young people and are in demand. I recently reviewed two unpublished labor market surveys for Rwanda and Kenya that confirms this.

The interesting bit of the research is that while less than a third of the youth surveyed expressed an interest in ag jobs, more than 40% saw opportunities in ICT related areas (not including ag). Clearly, showing the link between the two (ICT and Ag) should be a starting point. Three ICT-enabled functions that are in demand by industry and appeal to young people are agriculture input sales, logistics tech and agricultural infomediaries—the latter being the most cited, perhaps due to the well touted successes of M-Kilimi (M-agriculture), Esoko and others.

The rationale for Ag infomediaries, which enable quick access to information databases that were previously unavailable, best underscores how ICTs have improved agriculture in some places. The basic concept is that the economic livelihood of farmers has been hampered by ad hoc marketing systems and broader issues of information asymmetries for centuries. In other words, poor communication between producers and buyers results in inadequate planning, and ultimately an unstable market environment. So, In much the same way the global economy is driven by knowledge, agriculture depends on high quality, reliable and efficient information systems.

While the full impact of ICTs on ag is subject to research, there is compelling evidence about successful use of technologies in the sector.

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Getting the right information to farmers, when and where they need it, in a form (language and tone) they understand and can easily access is as vital to the success of the agriculture sector as the right type of soil, adequate water, sunlight and any other input. For this primary reason, I endorse BIID's call for information to be considered as an input in agriculture. It holds true beyond the Bangladeshi context.

It is mind-boggling to me that so few countries in Africa, the Caribbean and Pacific, where agriculture remains a key employer and contributor to national income, have created an enabling environment for the growth of agriculture infomediaries. The value of agricultural infomediaries is that gathering agriculture data and providing credible and efficient information services is vital at every stage along the value chain.

The reality is, in much the same way the global economy is driven by knowledge, enterprising agriculturists, consumers and others in the sector now depend on high quality, reliable and efficient information systems built around new technologies, well trained and knowledgeable people. So information is not just a key input for a farmer, informing him of what additives to use, when to plant, where to plant and what is more marketable to plant, it sustains the entire sector.

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Researchers, farmers, middlemen, retailers and consumers need infomediaries as they do not have ready access to agricultural data. So, infomediaries function as ‘translators’, who capture, synthesize and repackage data for different groups within the sector. The rising demand for value added services, combined with a paucity of agricultural data, underscores the strong demand for agricultural infomediary services. In fact, Mobile-based agricultural support and market research is among the most attractive growth sectors in places like Kenya. There's also potential elsewhere as ICT infrastructure strengthens. The high rate of mobile phone ownership among farmers across developing countries with large agriculture sectors shows how palpable these opportunities are.

The livelihood of farmers have been hampered by ad hoc marketing systems and broader issues of information asymmetries for centuries. Poor communication between producers and buyers results in inadequate planning, and ultimately an unstable market environment.

Inadequate and inefficient information is bad for the sector.... let's fix that! Recognizing its key role as an input is a key step.

GESCI in partnership with the African Union have just released five reports that assess the environmental, institutional and individual leadership capacity needs for the Knowledge Society in Africa.The rationale for the reports stems from the programme document on Africa Leadership in ICT (ALICT): Building Leadership Capacities for ICT and Knowledge Societies in Africa (2010). The main area of focus of the ALICT programme is to build the absorptive capacity of current and potential future African leaders to acquire, assimilate, transform and exploit the benefits of knowledge through knowledge sharing and exposure to technology. The aim is to build leadership capacity for producing dynamic organisational capability and creating conducive policy environments for development towards Knowledge Societies.

The four country reports (Zambia, Tanzania, Mauritius and South Africa) and the synthesis report describe knowledge societies as those based on the creation, dissemination and utilization of information and knowledge, and those in which knowledge assets are deliberately accorded more importance than capital and labour assets in the economy. In a knowledge economy knowledge and innovation are regarded as the key engines of economic growth.

The reports tell us that for knowledge societies to be realised education must be viewed as a vehicle for socio-economic development. ICT the report goes on to say should act as an enabler for both innovation and education and that awareness must be raised regarding the significance of science and technology for building innovation systems. Central to the cultivation of knowledge societies in Africa is also the role of leadership the reports confirm. Better leadership will lead to better policy making and thus sustainable and appropriate implementation of education, and science and technology policies across systems. Leadership in the Knowledge Society requires new mindsets (i.e. shifts in thinking), new skills and capacities to provide leadership politically, economically and socially in environments that are rapidly changing. In this regard leaders need to adopt more creative and strategic thinking, new approaches to problem?solving and acquire the skills for team building, collaboration and effective communication and the technical and technological capabilities for higher levels of efficiency, productivity and impact in planning, implementation and evaluation processes including foresighting and forecasting.

In all of the four countries surveyed there are clear policy frameworks emerging for moving from a resource based economy into a knowledge based economy. Education, ICT, Science Technology and Innovation (STI) are recognised as vital components of this change. Infrastructure presents challenges for access on a physical level and opportunities for exponential growth and change on a virtual level. However, in all countries surveyed education and training infrastructure is proving inadequate to meet the demands of expanding school populations resulting from the successes of Education For All (EFA) and Universal Primary Completion (UPC) policies. Many schools particularly in rural zones lack basic facilities and access to reliable electricity is a problem. Yet the exponential growth of mobile telecommunications in each country presents a scenario of a virtual future that may not be so dependent on a physical one. Education systems are slowly being transformed, while there are continuing concerns regarding school infrastructure, teacher availability, skills training and employability. Many of the countries appear to be caught in a low skills equilibrium characterized by self?reinforcing networks of national and local institutions which interact to stifle the demand for improvement in competency and skills.

The factors enabling and constraining development towards Knowledge?based Societies and Economies are similar across the four countries surveyed and are essentially similar to other regions in the world. While there are differences in relation to the KS vision and objectives, there are several common factors which have underpinned KS development in each of the four countries. What differentiates the rate of transition towards knowledge?based economic development in each country is the degree to which the KS agenda is articulated from national to local levels in the various faces of national policy, strategy and implementation in the KS Education, ICT, Science and Technology and Innovation pillars.

The country reports have demonstrated the progress that has been made in the development of Knowledge Society agendas related to the pillars of Education, ICT, Science and Technology and Innovation in the four African countries surveyed. The progress that has been achieved in each country particularly over the first decade of the 21st century has been remarkable. However, in terms of broad development towards Knowledge Society status, the process is still at an early stage. The country reports present a picture of diverging understandings of key Knowledge Society concepts at all system levels. The need is for a comprehensive approach to address the human capital development challenges as well as the structural transformation that development towards a knowledge?led future will entail.

The country reports point to a need for drivers and managers with expertise in the KS pillars of ICT, Education and Science and Technology, especially at senior and middle management levels. National level strategy and coordination mechanisms, interrelationships among sector and ministry based policies and strategies, capacity to translate the vision, mission and value frameworks into strategies and activities and to develop messages about the significance of the KS pillars for organisational and national development are generally lacking.

Please find the five reports attached.

For more information on the ALICT program and the reports please contact niamh.brannigan@gesci.org and helena.tapper@gesci.org

Please visit the GESCI website to find out more www.gesci.org