computers, smart and government, they go crazy for your data. we explain how these technologies work, how they can confer and how they can also go terribly, watch it now, to be up to date. don't miss our highlights. the d w program online. d w dot com highlight me. hello wherever you're watching us from. welcome to another edition of the 77 percent show. i eddie micah junior and i have the pleasure of being your host. you know, it's no secret that africa is a youthful continent. that's what the show is all about in sierra leone,

for example, 80 percent of the population is under the age of $35.00. and they are trying to sort out the futures from education to careers and maybe even political ambitions. but as the government actually doing enough to empower this massive young generation. my colleague aided kamani went to free town to find out more in a street debate whether you'd hello and welcome to the 77 percent were here at the prince of will school in free town. the capital of sterile yawn. and in this country, 8 out of every 10 people is under the age of 35. i had to look that number up again because it's unbelievable. 80 percent of the population are within the 77 percent. but the question we want to ask today is, is the government doing enough to not just empower this youth, but also make them competitive globally? who better to answer that question for me than in some thoroughly unions. and i want to begin with harder because you've had the opportunity to not to study abroad,

but also have an enterprise here. so perhaps you can give me based on your experience. do you think that the youth in this country have been enabled, are empowered enough to basically be part of the global community? they are only well as of a few months ago. there were only 3 disciplines in sierra leone when you go to high school. so there's the arts, the commercial and science, and based on my grades, when i saw the becca examination, which is the examination you take before you go to high school, i had a good grade. so i ended up in the science because every smart person is supposed to be a doctor. and most of the things where we're taught in school, we're not really practical. it was all theory. i learned about animals in your system, so i never got to see it and everything i learned was basically just theoretical. and i really struggle with this when i got a scholarship to study in norway in 2015. i to classes like chemistry and biology and in all the experiments which were very practical,

i was really struggling and my grades were not reflecting on the education system that i received in sierra leone was really smart here. and i went there, i realized i was just not exposed to this form of learning. let's ask the innovator who's actually standing right next to you mohammed. so you're one of the people who's not just creating employment, but also creating solutions for the use case earlier. so tell us briefly what you do and if what 100 saying is receptive of your experience. yes. so oh, for me here in civilian for the for want to not as clear. we young people ah, are willing to solve problems and take our initiatives to the next stage. but one thing that is also missing is the fact that we don't have the eco system. we are weak drive and then succeed for my own initiative. i've been able to empowered over through only a young people in my defend initiative, wish to engage initiatives on power over 20 communities using wished to energy. sometimes we wish we are stuck in it. we as we out,

we have our ideas and then we'll see, does this ideas have potential to really grew? are we from a wound the community that we've started? it's but it's talk because there are no supports really um skill up to the next stage. and he was secure funding. okay, 44. we get to the challenges. let me, let me go to k is daniel up because we're talking about some of the impediments that come about, particularly after graduating the university. and i know finances was one of the key ones for you. is it normal or is it a normal occurrence for young people yet to stop there? tertiary education because they simply no, but there is no school fees. um i got malcolm in 2016. whether there is no support financially for me to follow medication. so i decided to move with an santo wishes 0 telecommunication as a serious injury for me just to support medication. and i was working there for the past 6 years. there is a support. i think there's no with and there's no parliament like one. it is an

innovator and i was moved. i said this is very good. i said, i need to walk mom it to push this initiative and it's very good. it's empower me and i was open to do engineering rains. i city more there just a pleasure. it's out of me sitting up to support my mother. okay. all right, so let me speak to doctor coming here for a 2nd because she is the director of research if i'm not mistaken, of for delivery and delivery in the ministry of finance. so it sounds to me like, you know, the government has a great initiative in place, which is free primary education rather free education for all. but then after that, what next? that's what we're hearing. they're left to their own devices. do you think that's true from where you're standing? the thing is yes. for years we've been focused on traditional education. that's the reality. but now we're transitioning unseen the awareness and how people approach technical vocational training and the need for an up, you know, sheep and how he doesn't need to be just one sec or you have in want calling to

serve. you can serve in multiple ways. you can be a doctor and still be an entre printer. you can burnett up, you know, and then advocate. so having that platform or crating, those systems in which of them or these they call it and ideas, know they lobby and create set is just that we need to scale up and find ways to accelerate the creation of those spaces. yes, government has v m freak m quality education program for per m primaries m primary junior 2nd yesenia secondary school. but then it's how we form linkages with other sectors and other players that also jiving changing this spaces. we have those and juice working towards m and power in girls. those working towards i'm even driving entrepreneurship and it's is how we can accelerate efforts to bring all of this together and approached this problem in a systematic way. so not working in silos, then we can be able to live for all right. let me ask catch up because you talked about free and also quality education. you spoke earlier about the differences in

how education is passed down. do you think that the quality of education, what is being taught the back here is enough. oh, is there one thing i am personally not the free kind of person? and that's my personal opinion because i you don't think education should be faithful. she'll be accessible and affordable for everyone, because when it's free right now only to poor people can send your kids to like goldman school. i want it to be a, and i want to be, i want to be involved in sierra leone, where the local trader and a minister can stand yet kids to the same school because they can afford it. so you have to put the systems in place, but a people taking his children to school. i was part of the for education system. when i was in secondary school, my school fees were 60000 leon's, i got it every was reimbursed me for 45000 loans. but my textbooks were up to a 1000000 and that my parents found, had to, you know, afoot and i feel like with education is not just tuition is so much more involved. and these are the things i didn't have access to,

especially as somebody who was in secondary school. and i was privileged enough because i had access to all these textbooks and stuff which made me really smart student. but then there were other kids who couldn't afford it. like mohammed said, like, sorry, then, like daniel said, he, he couldn't get to college and honestly it, it's sad because he was smart and he is still smart. but how many of daniels are out there? how many of daniels don't have his privilege to be on tv? i know daniels i have lived with daniels. i have gone to school with daniels. i come from a community of daniels. okay. now, earlier we also talked about access. let's also focus on the danielle's, the girls via and the women in this community. do you think this equal opportunities for them within the context of thoroughly on if i'm dreaming him and using my feminist demand imagination and been optimistic, i will say we can compete. we have access, but the reality is we can't, we don't have access. i've been in a situation where at the age of 16 i got pregnant and i mean i school and the next

thoughts in my head was, if i'm not going to go through school with this pregnancy, i'm going to kill myself. that's because for years, pregnant girls were not given the permission to go to school, they became was julie buller outbreak will. over $14000.00 girls became pregnant and all of them were kicked out of school. so for me, access is very important. and access is not just, i'm from the font face, say we have free quality education. access is making sure that the system work for girls. and i'll say it progresses me. lake is been done because the people of desolation lead the, the most radical campaign of scene in my life. and that's the campaign for brit pregnant girls to be in school. we've seen all of the progress we've that women girls, young people. we saw that girls over tics out of school during the bola outbreak. they stood up for their rights to education. so we've had a situation where the now you're described by joseph in there which sounds almost

utopian and was actually successful. but eric, working with people on the ground as a journalist and with a youth program, i'm sure that the stories you here are wildly different from what we're hearing from joseph. and can you tell me what young people express to you as their biggest challenges in this country? we talk about the issues of educational issues of employment. it is quite perceived in a different way as it is been perceived in the lenses of the powers that made. so when you go to the place now to tell you about employment, but you see a lot of young people out there who are not employed in a situation. sometimes you see people would not have access to all certain opportunities, even if they have the qualifications or less they have to affiliate themselves. so the powers that be or i was listening to the points of daniel who couldn't contribute or in school. that is the same situation when you talk to you maybe or people that are into the okada, commercial or writing which is a motorbike. yeah. some of them you find out that or they're there because they don't feel like been there, but because you don't have the opportunities or platforms to move forward. let me

come back to your doctor because we are hearing that there is a disconnect. i mean, surely the policy that you're creating behind closed doors sound wonderful, but the implementation 0. where, where, where does, where does it get lost? so if you look back at how soon as developed over the years, you knew that growth has been in stop, stop, stop it, stop by then, what has kept us going is how we as the people are, is the leant on, continue to adapt and involve in how we implement design and roll up policies as joseph instead think the development of the radical inclusion policy was quite m inclusive. and we didn't have the validation to the of the implementation plan and much an evaluation plan. so it shows that as the country we will not talk in the doing things in the same always we are moving towards doing things in better and more fissions waste. so that's why we have a whole of government approach to human capital development. not just looking at education health and are we coach about all the factors that interlink this factor? so if we say we're talking about enhancing and getting farmers to get more seed and

fertilize as is also linking those hammers to markets, linking them to the school, fit in program lincoln, this good for the program to the nutrition program. so it's half in a whole systems approach to development. what is the thing is when you implement new policies, impact fix a while to shoot. so that's why we look at intermediate outcomes for now. that number of farmers benefits a number of children in school. we know that investments need to continue to need to be consistent. the need to be owned by every put everybody. we're now looking towards how we can not be left behind in the 40 the industrial revolution. because you've talked about the 4th industrial revolution. i must come to this because it surprised me dramatically that electricity penetration in this country is just above 20 percent. how can we be talking about robotics and big data when people don't even have access to power? so that's the thing. and when we, if we try to perceive it in the lines of this comes before the other, that's where we miss it. there are things that we can do together and we can do that in more efficient with let's as the person who's already doing it, mohammad,

we're hearing here that it's possible to both be waiting for power supply and still innovate is as true or is the dr. dreaming you're wanting to disclose. we already have seen moliere that walks in different contexts or people of develop solutions that can actually be replicated or can be scaled up. we have, as you said, i literally just above 20 percent access to energy. we have wind mills that we locally fabricated. all we need is want to scale of the solutions and replicate for more communities. we develop hydrogenated, so just from scrubs all the solutions can solve our energy crisis. but the a causes them does not provide a asta approaching institute of our coma took was caleb and then compete for the rest of the world. i know got my, my city i restricted with funding unless other areas and the wants of pirates. i said, so spas. energy is needed and speaking of i know that you already solving those problems. i want to ask cellar to give me this one of your innovations. can you explain what this is? because you're trying to solve the problem of energy in this country. yes. our from

in our driveway. hundreds, very excited. she's clapping for years. so i decided to use waste mathias to build the 1st d v antenna just from scratch. oh. and it's from scrubs, and then i've been able to use this to install in over 2000 community to 1000 households. all of this can be scaled up and it can be replicated across depend domains and we are so be our own problem with our own solutions within mid in civilian. so all we need is the platform to, for us to really succeed in these ventures. and then be the next l m max of africa be the next bill. gates from africa, which we already have seen is potentially all right, i want to hear from eric because we've heard that the rural community than the youth in the rural areas are experiencing vastly different challenges from the ones being faced here in the city. can you tell me what some of those are? okay, so we say free on is not serial. yeah. and this is quite common taken from what he was saying earlier. everything is actually centralized in freetown. so when you

have access to certain opportunities for young people, maybe you look at internet penetration. even those hinder or city do not have access to very much or better internet access. now when you go to the rural area, maybe the kind of university or whatever we have, everybody wants to come to freight on coming to probably college going to the college of medicine. of course we have july or the ones that are now doing, you know, to that point, but we need more things that are to be published or decentralized. we don't need every team to be around freetown, also another keeping that you need to take into consideration when we talk about many things like female or gender impairment issues. you find out that many of the people you see there are a champion in this causes probably they are within the city. so how most more can we try to, which are people in orders or areas. alright. i speaking of women, i have to come back to josephine because you've been accused of making all the noise only here in the center. ah, 1st of all, do you agree with that assessment?

and if it through what can be done to penetrate the knowledge, the information, the wealth of civil owens are correct. that points because of the work i do is across the country. so there are costs. positive noise is a very i'm is, is, is really fully across the country. the walk i do at papa swill is making sure that while $17000.00 out of school girls were living in rural communities, who somehow a pregnant will be left out of it because of the system that perpetually discriminates, their access to education, that we roam safe spaces for them, this is a place as i tell you when i walk in rural communities. i see that the only thing of some of these girls have at the same spaces growing up. oh girl in this country is a challenge, is a struggle. all right, let me ask cara if people are being responsive because as the woman who's in a position of leadership, i imagine you going to stand in front of

a council of men to tell them about something. do you think they would listen to you? you know, we're being told that we need to do things differently. you could want that you might be doing it, but is the country ready? i'm going to talk a lot about this patriarchy because i work with ministration. i work with reusable sanitary pads. i remember the 1st time i pitched all a bunch of men in new jersey guesses in the west. they said to me, oh, you sound like ellen mosque, maybe this will come true. it's not because they believed in me, but because they were telling me i was been delusional. but however, a year later, when i developed my product and again, pitched in front of a judge, a panel of men, many of them didn't understand my product. and many of them were just shying away from the topic. and again, i just said, we live in a world where majority are women. and if we as men or we as a society and not addressing issues affecting half of the population, how are we going to like make progress, danny?

oh no, daniel. once more to mohammed, i have a question for you. which, you know, i'm just wondering if you're also suffering from the same predicament where you're going to a banker and telling them about your great innovation. but they're simply from another generation, are you facing the sort of challenge? exactly. so it's it, i know didn't know the problem, the know what to do, but because the mindsets are different and the up approach to problems are different. the server is down. some people will even prefer by in 2000 antennas, are brought done by the localised sauce, the ones that are cheaper on that if they did mention, or the kindly get us as an itself. so it says sometimes difficulty with sicilian support in saline on businesses. even though we have the opportunity tongue stood look our contents that gives us the opportunity to have touch at present to representation of local mid product in all business places. but even our doubts, how many loaners actually been selling on business? lucy, i just know you guarantee it is not it, not so by monday to wants inputted things, but it fixed them for them to really,

really see down what we're doing. we bring in values to saloon. so what can be done then? i mean, if mohammed is already doing his bit, he is creating innovation. and cyril unions are turning back on it. if harder is bringing sanitary towels and people are saying, hey, you're a woman, you don't know what to do. so how, how does this country move forward with the flu? so i think everything us do with collective responsibility. we all need to work together as a team and also sometimes we do have the last what the implementation is lacking. so how about if we promote each other's young people? now we know that mama discrete in this one, it's a good thing that i realize our members on the panel were asking about the price cuz he wanted to support him. this is a good venture. we need to do this and also us the media. i think one of my key responsibility is over the years has been, or crates in stories or covering stories about young people involved into innovation, making them on an international platform. i've covered all stories in the past or by young people doing all some or mean technological developments,

innovations under rest. so we need to work together as a team and not keeping about the issues of gender. this is quite very important. women are been facing so many challenges have been talking to them in the past when you want to get a particular project, you know, been approved or whatever it is. you know, there's this whole issue of, i mean having probably affairs with women as, as institution is, which is quite but, and, or does or something doesn't need another discussion anyway. okay, so doctor kim, i want to come back to you because we've had a lot of things that might make one depress. you know, i, electricity not available. internet penetration, very low education, quality, questionable. but it's not all gloom and doom. is it? no slower? yeah. so 1st of all, our, to the, asked the young person in government, i wear that hat because i think it's my responsibility as a citizen to make, to be in space. this way i can drive positive positive change. so in my role as director of research and delivery, that's what i do. i'm under take research and advice and all. and i have to say

that i put forward the best advice and when you're making decisions, of course, you have to look at different factors that those, that need to be politically correct. that does i have to do with the resources that are available. what my belief is that in continued in surface is making sure that we have a critical mass of change makers. so that's what we have here and why i'm participating in this for what we need to do is we need to revisit the way we formed our development. cuz we're always talking about m financial enclosure and getting entropy. no sheep now we of course we in and putting money into incubators and accelerators, but then we work with development partners also. and it always seems to be it's more about a numbers game around number of beneficiaries than impact. so i was just saying, what if consider instead of giving each person a $1000.00 that would not r m adequately empower them to scale to that level. they can employ as many people and then gets to that church that they can actually make contributions to the taxes

. them a vast source, invest in that 100000, say to 2 business is back and get them to scale. employ 500 people, amick. absolute, adequate, and contributions to the tax system. ok. let's get to joseph in because we've heard about solutions that are already working examples that are already creating critical change. of course, one of the things that yoga positions does is, has done exactly that. what more can be done? i think the most important thing to loads east. as we continue these fights, we should continue to stickle. we should not get lengths. and as we speak up, we should so more mercy. because at some point, when i walk in on, on the streets of frito while across this country, and i hear the way men refer to women and i had were the leaders of our country talk about women. sometimes you just have to treat them with grace because you know they level of in ignorance, that needs to be walked on an hour speaking up only in this phases. and he thinks that is making sure that awareness has been raised here,

making sure that we continue to walk 40 thing sam a force. okay. and danny are we said earlier that there are many daniels who we know in this community? what is your message to them? because i mean, you might not have achieved your dream of going into engineering school, but you've made something of yourself. i just want to give one of our most the shallow giver. sure to go and try to that diversify certain things. in fact, when i was not able to follow medication, i find ways to register them. well, well, i'm looking for their group mercer boat finacialow to follow my cause and a lot of business ideas and a lot of experience. okay. hodge. i, we started with you. i'd like to conclude with you. what do you think lies ahead for the use of this country early i asked if they're able to compete globally. i wonder if your answer has changed. i think after hearing all this, i strongly stand on my answer because i see daniel here saying i reach out to

people you're supposed to help me. like, in an ideal world, you're not supposed to help you to resources are supposed to be there to help you. we don't even have systems where you can take loans and go to college. and after you get a job, you pay that back. when they were talking about people in the rural communities is how sierra leone is like, literally, globally, this is how we stand. don't, don't tell me i need to compete in the global market when i can't even compete with countries like kenya and gonna look at what ronda is due in senegal, in 2035. they're going to have so much energy from sola. and here we are, like looking at countries like the u. s. in england. we have to stop that. let's compete locally, instead of like globally. and i think one step at a time with local solution. yeah, we can get there, wants to put a time. i like that and i think that's also a great place for us to end. at the beginning of this debate, i asked if the serial union use a set up to compete globally. and i think the answer we've had repeated over and

over again is in good time. thank you for watching. most of our powerful an interactive debate, wasn't it? i mean, you can understand the passion with which the youth we're talking because look, the future of africa is in the hands of the youth. and so the need to push for what they need to be at the top. this is where we draw the cantons, on this edition of the 77 percent. we hope you enjoy the program and maybe even gave you a few issues to ponder over. we love it when you keep the conversation going. so drop us a line on facebook, instagram or youtube, or you can send us an email at 77, a dw dot com. as always, let's play the show out with the truck fresh from nigeria. ricardo banks. widow zoom back in by the way. i am eddie micah, julia, thanks for your time. oh, blue. with

i know demo with noah's name for howard gavin mickey is i do not come with aah with

ah, with your shift, your guide to life and the digital world explore the latest online trends. navigate your way through the digital jungle. get a global perspective. we'll be your guide and show you what's possible.

you decide what really matters to you. shift in 15 minutes on d, w. rev, it's all about e mobility. we travel through china without the driver. take a detour into the history of the electric car. how to get the most out of charged batteries. and take a new truck. forrest been read in 30 minutes on d. w. o. is the end of the pandemic in sight. we show what it could look like

will return to normal. and we visit those who are finding it difficult to success in our weekly coven. 19 special. every thursday con d. w. a pillar of sticks and society. a symbol of arbitrary rule, a tool in the struggle for justice taxes the right to levy taxes in the obligation to pay them both inherent in the sovereignty of the nation states and their citizens. but what happens when the power of taxation is undermined with won't pay check

session with don't talk to between 1st. on the w with this is debbie use live from berlin despite the current on slot. vladimir putin says russia does not want to destroy ukraine. potent claims there's no need for more massive air strikes, but towns and cities across ukraine remain under attack resident saying they have nowhere to ha.