Young people are the greatest asset for Africa

Chimwemwe John Paul Manyozo has written a blog about his take-aways from the Commission's Young Civil Servants Tech-Policy Hackathon in Johannesburg. In his piece, Chimwemwe details the innovative design-thinking methods that the 30 current and future civil servants from Southern Africa were inducted into. He writes: "I found the design thinking model to be very useful. I was amazed to see how my group came up with 51 ideas on how to digitize access to legal aid in Namibia in less than 20 minutes."

With the aid of new skills developed through the design-thinking course, Chimwemwe now plans to "hold workshops with the young people in secondary school and tertiary in Malawi to allow them to... address challenges in their schools and communities."

Chimwemwe also draws inspiration from the motivating speeches made at the beginning and close of the day by Pathways academic director Benno Ndulu and Pathways commissioner Maria Ramos:

"Africa is not going to reach its full potential, unless we take advantage of Africa’s greatest resource, its young population.” - Maria Ramos, Pathways Commissioner and CEO, Absa Group

You can read Chimwemwe's full blog here.