According to Mariem Kane (left) and Adi Ould Yacoub, ICT is one of the biggest solutions to the problem of youth employment in Mauritania, their country.

Whenever I visit Nouakchott – the capital of Mauritania – I am told that mobile communications are perfectly suited to the nation’s nomadic people, covering areas where there is no fixed network, such as along rural roads or in the dunes where families retreat on weekends. I am also told that the mobile broadband Internet, when it becomes available at more affordable prices and better service quality across the Mauritanian landscape, will be heartily adopted by the population – especially for sending pictures and videos as well as accessing the content available on the web. Mobile technology is already well-supported in the local market: ordinary citizens can get their smartphones or tablets repaired at the “Noghta Sakhina” (Hot Spot) in Nouakchott.
 
But when I am in Mauritania, I rarely hear about the opportunities that Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) can bring in terms of jobs – particularly jobs that require the creativity, innovation and radical new ways of collaboration, interaction and learning that provide professional growth for the nation’s youthful population. We are increasingly able to see that young people around the world have remarkable individual capacity to code and develop solutions for applications, including mobile solutions, which dramatically improves their job prospects demand grows for the development of multilingual content on global broadband networks.