In the spirit of International Education Week, we decided to share our favorite picture of children learning in South Sudan.
A group of children sit in class in the Northern Bahr el-Ghazal State in South Sudan. Photo Credit: Ezra Simon USAID/South Sudan
Many of us youth development practitioners have been eagerly anticipating the release of USAID’s youth policy with the hope that it will increase awareness of the importance of youth issues to development. I know from EDC’s work around the world how integral youth are to economic, social and political development.
Children around a laptop in school. Photo Credit: USAID
One of the main principles in the youth policy is youth participation and youth leadership. In my work with youth in Garissa, Kenya, I see how young people have jumped at the chance to get involved in their communities, when given channels to apply their ideas and energy. Young women and men producing and broadcasting their own radio stories throughout North Eastern Province about news that matters to them is a great example. Youth led programming‐with youth in real decision‐making roles is essential, but it is far from easy and quick; it takes time and involves lots of trial and error. So it’s important for us to understand this when designing programs—we need to be ambitious but also patient and target a range of outcomes, that include building the capacity of young people not just as leaders, but as team members that are able to work together to problem solve and make decisions. I’m hopeful that we, as practitioners, and our colleagues at USAID can design programs that reflect this complex process.
The Youth Policy’s emphasis on families and communities is another principle that the Garissa experience has demonstrated. As important as ‘youth‐led’ programming is, youth still need support and encouragement to take on new roles and responsibilities. In fact, I think parents are often the best partners we have in communities because they know first‐hand how much their children are frustrated or depressed when they do not have opportunities. We hear directly from parents in Garissa how much they want to help their children do something that stimulates them or gives them inspiration, such as access to training or scholarships. Programs need to include parents consistently therefore, and not just at the launch of the project or when problems arise.
I’m also hopeful that the Youth Policy will reinforce USAID’s gender policy to continue to highlight the importance of gender within youth programs and development programs more broadly. All too often, the different needs and considerations for reaching young women and young men are not part of youth program design. We see this particularly in workforce programs in which it is rare to see specific workforce strategies for young women vs. men. As youth employment receives more attention, we can’t forget that meaningful solutions for addressing youth employment must consider the unique constraints affecting young women’s and men’s employment and livelihoods opportunities.
About the Education Development Center, Inc.: EDC designs, delivers and evaluates innovative programs to address some of the world’s urgent challenges in education, health and economic opportunity. EDC has designed and managed youth and workforce development programs in over 25 developing countries. Our programs focus on changing the life trajectory of youth who have been left out and left behind. EDC offers an integrated package of education, supports and experiences to ensure young people transition to successful, productive adulthood. Our focus on earning, education, and engagement and three primary cross‐cutting strategies make EDC’s work unique.
Despite the importance of the agriculture sector in Ethiopia, access to credit is limited. USAID uses its Development Credit Authority to share risk with local banks, thus opening financing for underserved but credit-worthy borrowers. Photo Credit: Morgana Wingard
The recent growth of tech startups in Sub-Saharan Africa is starting to create a buzz.
And what’s not to be excited about? Tech companies created in Africa, by Africans, to address local and global problems have untold potential to change the world. After judging a recent Global Innovations in Science and Technology boot camp in West Africa, venture capitalist Scott Hartley said “providing guidance for the top 1% of innovators likely improves the lives of the 99%.”
This Ugandan entrepreneur received financing to expand his business thanks to USAID's Development Credit Authority, a sponsor of DEMO Africa. Photo: Morgana Wingard
Personal computer usage in Africa is exceptionally low at 2% and internet penetration is only about 14%. However, with indications that tech start-ups, tech hubs and internet usage across the continentare rapidly growing, the prospect for growth in the technology sector is significant.
Nonetheless, the hype has begun to overtake the growth.
One central challenge for startup tech companies in Africa is the simple fact that great ideas and viable business plans don’t mean much without access to financing. And financing for startups in Africa, especially in the tech sector, is difficult to come by.
Gaps in the market make it challenging for the tech ecosystem to develop. Across much of Sub-Saharan Africa, people struggle to access the technological conveniences– broadband internet, reliable power supply, internet availability. In many African countries, governments are still working to reform regulations and policies to make it easier for investors to reach entrepreneurs.
Additionally, the tech sector in Africa is considered high risk. Everyone speaks of the same example of success (read: M-Pesa), but investors are hungry for additional examples of risk paying off.
To top that off, the tech space is, by its very nature, less tangible to investors compared with brick and mortar businesses that sell traditional goods and services. While a risk-taking culture has long developed in tech hot spots such as Silicon Valley, investors in sub-Saharan Africa tend to be more conservative and risk-adverse.
To close the gap between investors who are ready to invest but can’t identify startups with viable businesses and the entrepreneurs who are ready to scale up but can’t access financing, USAID partnered with Microsoft, Nokia, DEMO, and the State Department to launch the first-ever DEMO Africa. DEMO Africa, to be held in Nairobi on October 24-26, will feature 40 of the most innovative entrepreneurs from across Africa who will launch their products to a group of world-class investors, businesses, and media.
Through DEMO Africa, USAID is attracting, rather than replacing, private sector financing for economic development in low-income countries. Entrepreneurs creating tech startups don’t need access to traditional aid, they need access to financing to grow. And to free up financing, we need to sensitize investors – venture capital funds, banks, and nontraditional financial institutions – to the tech sector. We need to create an appetite for investors to start investing.
Turning a great idea into a viable and profitable business model is difficult, but DEMO Africa is helping move Africa’s startup tech sector closer to ignition.
Regina Anek, a Deputy Director for Gender at South Sudan’s Ministry of Education in Eastern Equatoria state, just saved a 14-year-old girl from an early, forced marriage. She was empowered to intervene as a result of a series of trainings she received from a USAID-supported girls education program that provides mentoring training to teachers and education officials to encourage girls not only to enroll in but also to complete secondary school.
USAID’s Gender Equity through Education Program has strengthened the education system by addressing financial and infrastructure barriers, social and cultural barriers, and institutional barriers to gender parity in education, through scholarships; advocacy, community mobilization, and mentoring; and institutional support. The mentoring training gave Regina skills to intervene in situations where girls face communal pressure to drop out of school to get married.
Regina Anek, a Deputy Director for Gender at South Sudan’s Ministry of Education in Eastern Equatoria. Photo: USAID
“I was informed that a student from one of the schools in my state was about to be married off, and I hurried to convene a meeting with the family and community to stop the matter,” Regina explained. “Meanwhile, I asked the parents to allow me to accommodate the girl at my house so that she could continue attending school as we resolved her marriage case.” Regina added that after weeks of negotiating and educating the girl’s parents and community leaders on the importance of an educated girl to the family and society as a whole, the girl was allowed to return home and continue with school.
These USAID-supported mentoring activities are meant to support girls within and outside of the educational structure to address broader social and cultural issues that keep girls from completing their education.
Survey data indicate that while 30 percent of boys in South Sudan complete the eight-year primary cycle, only 17 percent of girls do. The legacy of war in South Sudan is one factor, but girls’ education is also hampered by other social, cultural and financial barriers that hinder them from either enrolling in or staying in school.
One cultural barrier is early marriage. Persistent poverty in communities has been cited as a major reason that parents give their daughters in marriage in exchange for some financial security for the family, but some cultural norms also dictate marriage readiness for girls as young as 13. The community at school and outside of school stigmatizes older girls in school, which adversely affects their school attendance. With USAID’s mentoring support and some tuition stipend, many girls who were married at an early age are able to return and complete secondary school.
USAID’s efforts in supporting girls’ education in South Sudan date back to 2002, when scholarship support was provided to girls to complete secondary school and join teacher training institutes. This was aimed at encouraging more women to join the teaching profession, because research indicates that targeted recruitment of women has a correlation with girls completing school. USAID provided more than 9,000 scholarships through this program to girls and disadvantaged boys in secondary school and more than 4,400 scholarships to students in teacher training institutes in South Sudan and the “Three Areas” on the Sudan-South Sudan border (Abyei, Blue Nile, and Southern Kordofan).
“Pounds of Prevention” is a series of short articles that illustrate how disaster risk reduction works and why it is important. Take a behind-the-scenes look at aid work in action, long before the disaster occurs. How is that possible? Read on!
A farmer in Malawi demonstrates how she diverts water from a main irrigation channel to a row of crops. Photo: Helen Ho, USAID
Today’s installment, Pounds of Prevention – Focus on Malawi highlights our work in the southern parts of the country where prolonged dry conditions and macroeconomic forces have combined to drive up food prices, making it especially difficult for poor and vulnerable households to grow or buy enough to feed their families.
Throughout the past decade, however, USAID has worked to improve people’s ability to weather and recover from these types of shocks. In partnership with a variety of groups, USAID is helping farmers to access capital and credit, conserve water and soil, grow different crop varieties, and construct small-scale irrigation systems.
By supporting the Mozambique's Ministry of Health family planning policy, USAID is helping to build healthier families in the Gaza province. Photo: USAID Mozambique
Kenya dairy farmers participating in USAID program. Photo credit: Robin Johnson/USAID
As a Dairy Value Chain Coordinator, I help Kenyan farmers apply innovative ideas and technologies to increase milk production by changing the way they manage their dairy cows. I’m able to do this through the USAID-supported Kenya Dairy Sector Competitiveness Program, which aims to increase the quantity and quality of milk produced by smallholder farmers, and to link them to the growing market for dairy products. By teaching the dairy farmers more efficient techniques, production has increased, raising incomes and helping them adapt to unforeseen environmental shocks and stresses.
The dairy sector in Kenya contributes 14 percent of agricultural GDP and four percent of overall GDP, and is growing by five percent or more each year. We’ve worked with the Government of Kenya to help produce a National Dairy Master Plan with the objective of achieving a seven percent annual rate of growth in the sector.
Sara Maiya is a Kenyan farmer who, wanting to learn how to better allocate her resources and get the most out of her herd, attended one of our workshops. As a result, Sara began to grow her own fodder, manually cutting and storing it to preserve it for the dry season. She dug a shallow well to have water for her cows year round. She adopted a zero-grazing approach, which we recommend as a best practice for farmers with small plots of land.
As a result, Sara has seen her milk production increase from 5 liters to 15 liters per day per cow. As her yields increased, Sara went from selling her milk to a local milk café to joining a dairy farmers’ cooperative that bulk sells her milk with other farmers who in turn sells to a commercial dairy processor. Along with the other farmers in the cooperative, Sara has instituted new techniques to adapt to Kenya’s changing cycles of rain and drought. By adapting and using these new techniques, they are producing a larger and more reliable quantity and quality of milk, creating a reliable source of income in the commercial dairy market.
I’m proud to have helped bring this knowledge and technology to 300,000 smallholder dairy farmers, like Sara, across Kenya. Through farmer-to-farmer outreach and through thousands of private sector service providers that have emerged as the Kenya dairy sector grows, our goal is to ensure these transformational approaches to small holder dairy farming continue to grow and expand to all 1.5 million rural Kenyan families that keep and maintain dairy cows. We hope that long after this program has ended, Kenyan farmers will continue to increase their economic resilience despite recurring droughts and the subsequent spikes in staple food prices that result.
Members of a community in Ghana visit a USAID-supported water station. Photo: Kasia McCormick, USAID
Learn more about USAID’s work in the field of Water and Sanitation.
USAID’s Senegal mission has been working with local farmers and craftsmen in Fatick, Senegal to help increase vegetable production in market gardens and strengthen the local economy.
See related videos on the Senegal YouTube page and visit our website to learn more about USAID’s Water Programs.
