In the words of Roman philosopher, Seneca, “luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” Rather than sit on their laurels lamenting the devastating effects of the pandemic, African youth can spend their energies strategising solutions for personal and societal benefit. Overall, internet-native youth keen on harvesting and harnessing the latent possibilities that COVID-19 portends need to count themselves lucky for being born in the information age. By tapping into opportunities within information and communications, the youth can help convert the internet into a productive infrastructure during COVID-19 and simultaneously tame its negative effects, such as cyber bulling and online fraud.
Opportunities for Africa’s youth
One area of potential entrepreneurship lies within online information, education and communication. The contagious nature of the novel disease necessitates public service information dissemination on a massive scale if behaviour change is to be achieved. The challenge is that much of the information regarding COVID-19 is rendered in technical, complex and scientific language. If COVID-19 jargon – everything from terms such as epidemiology to co-morbidity – is obscure enough for many with formal education, how about for the millions of Africans who do not have formal education?
Although efforts have been made to simplify the information, much more needs to be done. Consider for instance that in Sub-Saharan Africa, the predominant languages into which COVID-19 is communicated are English, French and Portuguese. However, there are 2000-plus indigenous African languages across the continent. While equalising access to information on the pandemic will require massive investments into language resources, such action is important to help elevate information as a weapon with which to fight the pandemic.