On August 12 each year, the Gambia joins the rest of the World to Celebrate International Youth Day. In its resolution 54/120, the United Nations General Assembly endorsed the recommendation, made by the 1998 World Conference of Ministers Responsible for Youth, to declare 12th August as International Youth Day.

The day serves as a powerful reminder of the significant role young people play in shaping a sustainable future and celebrate their achievements thus far.

The theme for this year is: ‘From clicks to Progress: Youth Digital Pathways for Sustainable Development’. The theme highlights how young people drive digital technologies to advance progress towards achieving the SDGs.

By celebrating the digital contributions of youth, we can inspire further innovation and collaborations towards achieving sustainable development.

While The Gambia is among Africa's smallest nations, it is uniquely positioned to become a pioneering tech hub. To take advantage of this, the National Digital Economy Master Plan 2023 was launch as a flagship project that will leverage technology, digital solutions, and services to ensure digital inclusion by connecting the unconnected and under-connected, create jobs, and develop the economy.

The Recovery Focus National Development Plan ‘Yiriwaa’ 2023 – 2027 highlights the four pillars below as critical to enhancing our digital landscape with a whole of society approach for its development. These are:

• Pillar 1: Enabling environment, policy, and regulation

• Pillar 2: Inclusive digital infrastructure

• Pillar 3: Digital innovation and entrepreneurship

• Pillar 4: Digital skills and human capital development

With the support of our partners and through our satellite agencies the Ministry is providing access to ICT training facilities at our various Youth Centers in Rural Gambia including Jarra Soma, Bansang, Janjanbureh and soon to be operational Farafenni.

These centers are offering training opportunities that can help enhance the digital skills of young people who otherwise might not have had the capacity.

The UNDP Accelerator Lab is also providing an enabling environment to budding entrepreneurs to co-work and network. It also supported local informal traders, particularly women and youth through the “My Lumo” a digital e-commerce platform allowing local informal traders to market their goods and services and transact electronically.

This is providing a huge market platform for young entrepreneurs to market and sell their goods to customers.

There is a growing acceptance that the digital economy is rapidly transforming the employment landscape across industries including financial services, health, entertainment, transportation and certainly information and communication technology (ICT).

Millions of jobs in the very near future will require advanced digital skills and a shortfall is projected. While young people are considered digital natives, jobs requiring coding or other advanced digital skills will continue to need skilled human resources. The growth potential of the digital economy presents an opportunity for tackling the youth employment challenge especially through fostering youth-led digital entrepreneurship.

It will be important at this juncture to recognize the work of various institutions leading to the process of improving digital skills among young people. We are witnessing an increase in training opportunities in Coding and Robotics for children and young people.

Our young people are winning robotics competitions abroad despite the limited resources at their disposal. Young people are developing Apps that are helping to improve the business landscape in the Gambia and improving lives and livelihoods.

To conclude, I wish to assure you all that government will continue to avail the necessary policy and regulatory environment including needed resources to continue to leverage on the potentials of the digital environment. Government recognizes the fact that its potential can help address unemployment thereby reducing poverty.

While I wish you all happy celebration of international youth day 2024, I further wish to invite you all to collaborate and partners with us to harness the demographic potential of our youth to transform education, economic growth, peace and prosperity in the Gambia.

Happy International Youth Day! Thank you