Two Seychellois take part in ITU youth forum |24 September 2008

Vanessa Low Hon, a student at the Seychelles Institute of Technology, and Franky Baccus, an employee of the Department of Information Communications Technology, attended the ITU Telecom Africa Youth Forum 2008, which took place earlier this year in Cairo, Egypt.

This was the seventh youth forum and the third held in Africa. Their main goal is to support young people from developing countries to improve their access, use and knowledge of information communications technology (ICT) to bridge the digital divide and integrate them into the information society.

More than 300 candidates from 38 African countries took part in the competition process to be awarded a fellowship to attend the forum.
 
As in previous years, candidates were required to submit a short essay on the topic: “If you were head of state for your country, what would you do to facilitate the uptake and use of ICTs by young people for socioeconomic development? And how can ICTs contribute to peace and stability within the African continent?”

From these candidates, 71 young Africans were chosen to take part in the forum. To preserve the gender balance, fellowships are awarded to one male and one female candidate from each country.

Twelve ITU Telecom alumni from past youth forums also took part, to guide and inspire their fellows during the forum events. Ambassadors from the Cyber Peace Initiative of the Suzan Mubarak Women’s International Peace Movement cooperated with ITU members on the organisation side.

The ITU Telecom Youth Forum is an initiative focusing on ICT as a tool for social and economic development. Launched by the ITU in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 2001, the forums have built an outstanding reputation for knowledge sharing and have been a regular component of ITU Telecom events.

The two Seychellois described the forum as a rare opportunity to meet and interact with a variety of major issues related to regional and global ICT.

Mr Baccus said: “The youth forum expanded our horizons and was a life-changing experience; it helped us to understand the nature and potential of the global communications industry, connected us to the field of ICT and those involved in it, whether they were ministers, CEOs, regulators, stakeholders or technology leaders.”

Ms Low Hon added: “It encouraged us as well to embark upon our careers as engineers, policymakers and business managers in the ICT industry. The benefits reaped from this forum are unlimited; everything depends upon our willingness, abilities and creativity to make the best use of them.”

The two also contributed in drafting the ITU Telecom Africa 2008 Youth Forum Declaration document, which gives the fellows’ visions and action plan for Africa.

The document is available on the ITU’s website at the URL: http://www.itu.int/AFRICA2008/forum/youth.html

This was the fifth time Seychellois had taken part in such forums. Previous occasions were: the ITU Telecom Africa 2001 in South Africa (Dona Morel and Myrna Dine); the ITU Telecom World 2003 in Geneva, Switzerland (Ralph Vel and Belinda Valmont); ITU Telecom Africa 2004 in Cairo, Egypt (Trevor Pool and Lavanya Palani); and ITU Telecom World 2006 in Hong Kong, China (Patrick Moustache and Hendrica Larue).