ICTworks

The popularization of internet, social media, and mobile applications have intensely changed our modern society, creating new ways for starting and managing a business or get employed. This brings the need to rethink and update the related skills to succeed in today’s studies, business and employment.

The biggest challenge that worries me so much is the digital skills gap among young people and the gender crisis in the usage of the internet in our communities. The majority of unemployed youths in Uganda do not have basic skills and cannot do the things powered the use of technology and the internet.

I have worked in my community as a young IT graduate, I have met many young people in schools, universities and institutions who have never had a chance to use a computer or the Internet. The majority of these are girls who have always thought computing as a thing for boys and have never attempted to learn any digital skills.

Yet 90% of the good jobs are advertised online.

This challenge puts all of us in who have had a chance to learn any computing skill and have spare time to go out in our communities to work as an intermediary to motivate, inspire, guide and otherwise provide an opportunity for those groups of young people especially women to learn and get online.

I do believe that peer to peer training is fundamental in helping people get over the skills gap. It works out best when communities are teaching communities themselves to inspire and connect more people. The wonder of technology to me is that it allows people to meet more other people to solve challenges as individual to individual or community to community.

We may not be able to change the whole world, but we can change our part of it.

By Joseph Wokwera, IT Associate and ICT Tutor, Uganda