Mobile tech keeps kids safe in Africa's largest slum

In Kibera in Nairobi, Kenya – the largest slum in Africa – 22-year-old Regynnah Awino wields a mobile device to pinpoint the dangerous places she has to avoid, dodging threats of gender-based violence. In a report by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) launched in the Philippines this week, Awino says technology keeps her safe in her community. With the theme “Adolescence: An Age of Opportunity," UNICEF’s State of the World’s Children Report 2011 urges developing nations like the Philippines to equip and empower the youth with information and communication technology (ICT). The UNICEF report says that Map Kibera – a digital mapping project that helps people identify “safe and unsafe physical spaces" – has helped Awino and other young people in Kibera to “gain new awareness about their surroundings, empowering them to amplify their voices on critical issues." Awino says in her testimonial, “Map Kibera has really helped my people know what we have in our community and how to make use of and improve what is available." ‘Digital divide’ The UNICEF report acknowledges, however, that the poor in many developing countries “remain largely excluded from ICT and its benefits." Map Kibera, in Awino’s case, is the product of a partnership between UNICEF and other agencies. “A vast digital divide continues to exist not only between the industrialized and the developing world – particularly the least developed nations – but also between rich and poor within countries," the report adds. In the Philippines, projects to expand the reach of ICT have not hurdled basic problems of computer shortages and computer illiteracy. In public elementary schools, the ratio of students per computer is as high as 25,000 students to one computer, according to 2006 data from the Department of Education. In public high schools, the ratio is 111 students per computer. Investing in teens Encouraging governments to invest in programs for the youth in areas like ICT, the UNICEF report says, “ICT offers the potential to remove barriers to education and literacy and to hand adolescents a key to unlock many of the benefits of the modern knowledge economy and not be left adrift by globalization." The report explains that adolescence “is the pivotal decade when poverty and inequity often pass to the next generation as poor adolescent girls give birth to impoverished children." “Investing in adolescents can accelerate the fight against poverty, inequity, and gender discrimination," the State of the World’s Children Report 2011 says