Caribou Digital Releases: Youth in Digital Africa Report to Inform Policy Changes for 400 Million Young Africans

By sharing our experiences, we not only showcase the impact of digital technology but also offer insights into how we can optimize its benefit to young people. Through our narratives, we aim to propose effective strategies for harnessing digital technologies. We acknowledge that many of our peers across the continent do not have the access to technology we speak of throughout this report. The youth digital divide remains deep and wide because of poor connectivity infrastructure, the high cost of internet data and devices, biased gender norms, and a lack of digital skills. This publication is a reflection of many inputs, resulting in a collective “we.” In the report, “we” is a combination of the 20 youth panelists, Caribou Digital, and the voices of more young people from reviewed literature. The Mastercard Foundation and Caribou Digital provided the space that enabled the conversations and co-creation of this publication. We acknowledge that the views expressed in this report do not reflect the perspective of all youth in Africa but those of the young people selected to be part of the youth panel, across the spectrum of gender, location, disability, and citizenship status. There are similar shared experiences with digital technologies among youth around the globe, but in this report we share our experience with digital technologies as Africans.