ICTs bridge inequalities, solve social problems, says ECA boss
Getting the youth involved
"However for the young people to take up social entrepreneurship successfully they will need access to information on the world's problems to ignite their passion and get an insight into social issues in order to develop their social enterprise ideas," he said at the opening of the Global Knowledge Partnership (GKP) Africa 2008.
The GKP meeting held under the theme "Powering Africa with ICT and Entrepreneurship was a pre-event meeting to the Science with Africa conference. GKP is a group of highly committed like-minded individuals, institutions and partners, working towards the noble goal of promoting knowledge and information through the use of ICTs.
"It is pleasing to note that GKP is maintaining its tradition of innovative thinking to promote the use of ICTs across different sectors and ICT must be used in the exciting area of social entrepreneurship and equally address the challenge of climate change," he said.
Social problems shouldn't be left to government
"This social entrepreneurship is a powerful tool because it recognises that social problems should not be left to government alone to solve and neither should societal needs be subjected to hardnosed profit consideration of business enterprises," he said, noting that combining the use of ICTs and the ideals of social entrepreneurship as developed by the GPK is a great idea.
"In this regard I welcome the GKP Youth Social Enterprise Initiative because ICTs have been used to transform the business world and are poised to revolutionalise the development sector," he added.
Janneh said that climate change has become one of the defining issues of our time and it poses a challenge to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) especially in Africa.
"Authoritative reports like that of the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) indicate that although Africa contributes least to the causes of the climate change, it is the region that will suffer from its effects," Janneh observed that many African countries run the risk of experiencing aggravated water stress, reduced food security, increased effect of extreme weather events, displacement of millions of people and increased transmission of vector-borne diseases.
Social entrepreneurship and climate change
He said that given the impact of climate change on the poorest sections of society it is particularly important to explore how ICTs can help in adaptation to climate changes especially through technical analysis, promoting flow of information and enabling exchange of views on best practices. "There is a potential link between social entrepreneurship and climate change adaptation because governments often have little incentives to incorporate adaptation into decision making. I therefore urge you to explore these linkages as ECA will contribute to ensuring that a positive outcome on these issues at this meeting."
UNECA director for ICTs, Science and Technology Aida Opoku-Mensah said that the Science with Africa conference is about promoting the use of science and technology in the African development process.
"The conference is about exploring how African scientists can increase their collaboration and participation in international science initiatives and research and development projects," she said. She said the conference is more than a conference in a sense that it has a follow-up mechanism to ensure that African scientists are kept in the picture with regard to such initiatives and projects.
"The conference would lead to improved linkages between international scientific research programmes and business enterprises to expedite economic growth in Africa and would come out with a framework for using science and technology to support economic progress in Africa," she said.
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