NEPAD Youth Conference, first day

We got unceremoniously woken up by a 6:30 reminder call, when we'd been told we would be starting an hour later. Back to bed for another hour. The Director General of the Department of Communications was discovered to be facilitating the show, which is a good show of how serious this event is being taken.

Lyndall also opened the day by setting a theme that the challenge for this generation of youths is to prevent an economic colonisation of Africa - preventing Africa from being left out of the benefits of the Information Society.

NEPAD was defined more as a mindset than a project - it's about not going around asking people for money in a subservient manner, it's led by Africa, it's about self-reliance and building capacity.

We were also given a background to the WSIS's beginnings, proposed by Tunisia at an ITU meeting.

Ambassador Goutalia of Tunisia then discussed a bit more of Tunisia's involvement in the WSIS, from proposal to holding the second stage of the WSIS in Tunis in November.

NEPAD Secretariat member Patricia MAngo then gave a progress report on NEPAD, which unfortunately came across as unrelated and not of interest to the subject or the group assembled.

Mbulile from the NEPAD Secretariat - Youth Desk, then asked the simple question: do the youth of Africa even know what NEPAD is? Hers was mostly an inspirational/motivational talk of the power the youth should feel is available to them.

An interesting character next - Henry Chasia has been involved with the ITU and ICTs in Africa for decades, and mostly discussed the evolution of the ITU and of the need for a forum for social issues around technology and the ITU's activities. He was here representing the NEPAD e-Africa Commission, which is basically an overarching program to try to find solutions to the digital divide - between countries and between people in the same country.

His message to the youth was that they would be the ones bringing ICTs into Africa, as they had "no fear of technology".

Supper was preceded by the Minister of Communications giving a short talk on what youth has achieved and thus what youth should be achieving now. Thankfully short, as we were all very hungry. Food was good, unsurprisingly.

The next excitement is the 05:45 call tomorrow morning, as we are going on an early-morning game drive before we get to eat our breakfast. No drive, no breakfast, I guess. Off to bed then, eh?