THE ROLE OF YOUTH IN ICT DEVELOPMENT
(Adapted from ‘ZAMFARA KOFA’ vol. 17may, Edition 2008)

The greatest asset to any nation is their youth, The present future and hope of a nation in her youth according to Erasmus the famous philosopher. The role of youth in ICT is a strategic one, though experience might not be on their side compared to the older ones but they are zealous, innovative, very agile, and have the gift of imagination. They are committed, adventous, and even a risk-taker, all these are qualities that form any society and place her in a right position. A recent survey carried out in Germany shows that in 20 years to come when the majority of the workers would have retired, finding a replacement will be very difficult for them.

The acronym “ICT” means Information Communication and Technology. Information is defined as processed data, it can be voice, image, numeric, characters or code or any message that is readable and has meaning of to the destination user, whether human or machine. By communication we means sharing of information and technology is the systematic way ways of doing things for the use of mankind.

There are lot of gains to enjoy for any developed ICT nation be it in terms of economy and social objective. We live in a computer age where every nation of the world wants to be heard or to be heard. It is absolutely true that the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s, were years of invention and the 90’s was re-engineering but 20th century is all about speed and velocity. The researchers says that in the next 20-25 years the most sought after commodity by in the whole world will not be crude oil but the ICT skilled person. Chirms ICT is in the hands of their youth and they have the fastest growing Gross Domestic Product in the world.

It was in record that 60% of Indian earnings come from ICT. This has greatly improved the economy and the social well-being of her citizen. Who are those that are realm of these affairs? They are the Indian youths.

Going by the international telecommunicating union (ITU) report, one of the top priorities of ICT world is discovering new technology in conjunction with existing one. It is only people of ideas and very creative mind that can do this and they are YOUTH.

Software is a program that runs on computer and it is widely used in ICT world. The development of software is very crucial in developing new technologies. More than 85% of software developers are youths. Andy Robin (the robotic expert), who invented Andrind and Google search engine is a youth and is he also sitting down on top of a multimillion dollar company like Bill gate of Microsoft. For any nation to developed, the youth must be allowed to be part of those that formulate policy and ideas.



Oyeslove, Sojiwakeup & Cidersweet @ Kotorkoshi Mountain, Kotorkoshi, Zamfara State. Nigeria (Oct. 2008)