It’s barely a week when the first continental YouthConnekt Africa Summit ended in Kigali, a summit that drew about 3,000 youth from African countries and beyond.

One of the highlights of the summit was the official launch of the YouthConnekt Africa Hub and YouthConnekt Africa Empowerment Fund, both of which aimed at empowering African youth.

According to Jean Philbert Nsengimana, the Minister for Youth and ICT, the YouthConnekt Africa Hub was approved by a ministerial roundtable meeting on the sidelines of the summit and is expected to be operational before the end of this year.

"We officially launched the hub and the fund during the summit and this was as a result of the ministerial meeting on the sidelines of the event,” he told The New Times.

Nsengimana said in an interview last week that in less than a month, a team of experts will be tasked to design a model that will guide the hub.

"It will be a team of experts from different countries and they will consider different options and come up with a model that will help both the hub and the fund to be operational. The idea is to contribute to job creation, promote civic engagement as well as leadership among African youth,” he said.

Unlike common innovation hubs, the YouthConnekt Africa Hub will be operating as an organisation.

"You can’t compare this hub with other innovation hubs like kLab or Fablab. It will be more like an organisation with headquarters in Rwanda. The main task will be to help YouthConnekt country programmes as well as help in the implementation of programmes under the YouthConnekt initiative,” he noted.

The YouthConnekt initiative, seeks to create 10 million jobs by 2020 in emerging industries; 25 million opportunities (through training and enrolment in workplaces); and identify, nurture and grow one million leaders that provide solutions, participate in advocacy and become role models in their communities.

The hub will also facilitate to nurture 5,000 digital ambassadors in each African country to collectively help connect and digitally empower at least 100 million Africans allowing skills to be transferred to local communities.

Already, commitments to support the hub and the fund have been made by different organisations and individuals, according to the minister.

Tonye Cole, the executive director and co-founder of Sahara Group, Nigeria’s largest private oil refinery company, committed to put in $75,000 (about Rwf62 million), while United Nations Development Program (UNDP) committed $200,000 (about Rwf166 million).

UNDP pledged to raise resources to elaborate the legal and corporate structure of the hub.

Another benefactor to the fund is Alibaba founder and chief executive, Chinese billionaire Jack Ma, who contributed $10 million.

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