INTRODUCTION
Young people represent about a quarter of the world’s population. If these 1.8 billion young people are prepared with the relevant skills to become productive and engaged members of society, they could significantly contribute towards positive socio-economic development outcomes and accelerate the achievement of the SDGs. However, investments towards quality employment and entrepreneurship opportunities fall short of young people’s aspirations and the growing pool of young jobseekers.
This session of the Road to Addis focused on young people: the natural adopters of technology and the ones who will inherit the world that technology is now shaping. Connected to each other like never before, young people today want to contribute to their communities, propose innovative solutions and drive social progress and change.
This session answered the following questions:
- What can be done to ensure the
youth community is empowered and fully engaged in the decision-making process that shapes the global digital agenda?
- How can we include marginalized and unconnected youth in the digital development dialogue to achieve universal connectivity?
- What capacity-building efforts and digital innovation ecosystems need to be developed to address the digital skills gap especially in a post-COVID-19 world?
This session took place on
International Youth Day 2021, and was in line with the
#Youth2030 agenda to work with and for young people.
This event was highly interactive with
youth participation, online chat and Q&A from the audience, a session illustration, as well as videos, and polls.
The session was hosted by ITU and moderated by David Kirkpatrick, Founder and Editor-in-Chief, Techonomy Media.