ADDIS ABABA, Aug. 29 (Xinhua) -- The UN Development Program (UNDP) Tuesday reiterated UN's commitment to supporting young innovators to enable them to unleash their potential and contribute to positive changes at national, regional and global levels.
Ahunna Eziakonwa-Onochie, UNDP Resident Representative in Ethiopia, made the remarks at the opening of a one-day forum under the theme, "Ensuring innovative and creative spaces for youth engagement in Ethiopia," in Addis Ababa, capital of the East African country.
Eziakonwa-Onochie noted that the UN development system also recognizes innovation as a gateway for engaging the youth and harnessing their potential.
"The UN is working in earnest to unleash the potential of the youth to take the lead at local, national, and global levels as change-makers," she said, adding, "Supporting social venture incubators which have been conceived and designed by, and are now led by young people is one area of focus for the UN in this regard."
The forum was organized by the UN Ethiopia in collaboration with the Ministry of Youth and Sports of Ethiopia, a country where close to two-thirds of the population are under the age of 24 years.
Speaking on the occasion, Habiba Siraj, Ethiopian State Minister of Youth Sports, noted that Ethiopia has been taking various measures to facilitate conducive environment for the youth in the country so that they actively participate in the country's overall development and benefit from its fruits.
"The government has undertaken measures that enable the youth to be citizens with democratic outlook, professional competency, skills, ethics so that they can actively, efficiently, and widely participate in the benefits from the country's ongoing development activities," said the state minister.
"Access to employment opportunities and empowerment are the basic demands of the Ethiopian youth. Our youth have made their own voice here loud and clear about their present and in the future. In this regard, due measures must be taken to address this issue, because it is a country of youth," she noted.
The Forum has featured the testimony of three young self-taught innovators on young innovation, who came from Kombolcha, Wollo, about 367 km north of Addis Ababa.
They have invented different gadgets, including robots for various purposes, censors of different types, water pump, FM transmission, and mobile applications among others.
Speaking at the Forum, they said that they have developed their innovation skills on their own with internet, a service which they accessed at internet cafe.
They said they have a dream of establishing a big technology company that serves a hub of innovation for young innovators, and also to help Ethiopia be known for its technological innovations.
One of the young innovators, Nur Jemal, a grade-9 student in Kombolcha, told Xinhua that they would participate in competitions first at home in November this year and then in the United States.
"We have created different inventions, for example water pump, FM transmission, and others. We are going to participate, first, in the competition here in the country in November, and then in the robotics competition to be held in the United States, and we will go there representing our country," he said.
Eleni Gabre-Madhin is a CEO and founder of BlueMoon, which is Ethiopia's first youth agribusiness incubator and seed investing platform, with which the three self-taught young innovators are now working on some projects.
Stating that the three young innovators have created their inventions on their own, Eleni told Xinhua that support to such young people is necessary.
"There are many young people like Anwar, Nur and Fikir, who have come from Kombolcha; probably there are thousands like them. What strikes me is that, everything they have done is on their own, ... Why don't we provide that free internet, why don't we provide such support, so that we would see hundreds of thousands of young people who are ready to change not only Ethiopia but the world. So, we must support them in ways that are possible."
The forum links to the African Union declaration of 2017 as the year of Harnessing the Demographic Dividend through Investments in the Youth, according to the organizers.
