Digital entrepreneurship reaches 10,000 youth

DAILY NEWS Reporter

MORE than 10,000 Tanzanian youth have benefited from a digital knowledge empowerment programme that has enabled them expand their business and entrepreneurship skills.

Initiated by a non-government organization, Digital Opportunity Trust (DOT), the programme has reached over ten thousand youth in five regions of Tanzania, according to the organisation’s Communication Chairperson, Ndimbumi Msongole, “The project is set to empower the youth in solving problems and become a force for positive change in communities at the wake of the country’s industrialization campaign,” she said during the re-launch of the project in Dar es Salaam over the weekend.

She said the project aims at economic empowerment programming, which includes social innovation, entrepreneurship, information and communications technology (ICT), empowerment and leadership skills development.

She said the over 10,000 beneficiaries are young women and men whose entrepreneurial skills has been modernized to suit the present digital era while others managed to upgrade their job skills by using information technology to increase their incomes and employment opportunities.

Explaining further, she said the project activities includes recruiting of youth to take leadership training, to deliver entrepreneurship, information-communications technology and workforce readiness programs; and to develop and curate self-directed online learning for youth.

She said huge success of the digital programme has been recorded in three regions of Dar es Salaam, Coast Region and Morogoro while the project is underway to train more entrepreneurs in Mtwara, Kilimanjaro, Iringa, Arusha, and Dodoma regions According to Communication Chairperson, man, the digital entrepreneurship project is a first of its kind to be delivered in Tanzania.

Elaborating the organisation’s modus operandi, Ndimbumi said: “Youth recruited will go through online and face to face training gaining 21st century skills vital for the job market.

Going by Digital Livelihoods’, the project is funded by the Government of Canada (GAC). The roll out of the project was on July 2017. Digital Opportunity Trust (DOT) is an international NGO originating from Canada with branches around Europe, Africa, and Middle East.