DOT | Digital Opportunity Trust

We’re still riding on the wave of this year’s Tanzania Youth Digital Summit (TYDS), which took place in August 2021. 

The four-day summit, hosted by DOT Tanzania, involved youth, ITC experts, government and private sector representatives. The summit inspired participants to leverage digital opportunities, calling ecosystem players to nourish digital and technology skills in youth to create positive change in their communities. 

It was the largest and most inclusive event to date, TYDS 2021 saw an unprecedented level of engagement from 2,716 youth and partners across Tanzania Mainland, and Zanzibar. The findings and learnings sourced from surveys, Focus Group Discussions and the U-Report Digital Skills Poll have been distilled into the report Digital Inclusion for All: Digital Skills for Youth Employment and Entrepreneurship. Made up of 8700 youth voices, the report includes easy-to-pick recommendations for government stakeholders, ecosystem partners, and champions of youth development. 

If you missed out on this year’s summit, you can view the highlights here. 

To celebrate the success of the summit and the release of the report, we wanted to highlight 4 #DOTYouth who are using their skills to build meaningful businesses and give back to their communities. 

 

Glory Mtei

Tanzania is home to the second-largest livestock herds in Africa, after Ethiopia, producing about 380,606 litres of raw milk monthly. Glory noticed, however, that much of that goes to waste in one form or another during the rainy season, mostly because of poor market accessibility. With high levels of waste in milk production, Glory saw clear opportunities in the dairy sub-sector that had not been explored before. To respond to this, Glory set up a small processing plant to enable livestock farmers to turn their wasted product into a profitable alternative, such as Milk Yogurt.  

Despite having an equal balance in the number of women employed in the agricultural sector (52% compared to 48% males), the gender pay gap in the sector is large (TZS 278,748 for males compared to TZS 165,920 for females). Through Glory’s work, she wishes to see livestock farmers in Hanang District –especially women – gain by having reliable markets for their milk even during the rainy season, thus closing the gender pay gap present in the sector. 

Glory was supported by the Dare 2 Change Tanzania Social Entrepreneurship Programme, through which she received Sh5 million as seed funding to start and sustain her new business, Moow! Life. The Dare 2 Change Tanzania Program is an exclusive six-week program for young social innovators in Tanzania to gain 21st-century skills, develop their ideas, prototype and test them

Every year, DOT Tanzania recruits youth with a compelling vision for change for their communities, trains them for several weeks, gives them a chance to pitch their ideas for funding, coaches and mentors them for business resilience, and as a final step, connects them to other organizations that will take the business to the next level. 

Through its other programs, DOT Tanzania trains unemployed graduates in leadership, digital, business and 21st-century skills then deploy them back to their community where they mobilize other peers (out-of-school and out-of-work youth) and train them on the same. The youth become digital ambassadors and community leaders who help other youth to get employment and improve their businesses. So far DOT Tanzania has worked with over 250 youth to train over  20,000 people across the country. 

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/glory-mtei-2a038692/?originalSubdomain=tz
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Gerald Mukama and Emmanuel Mtera

Gerald Mukama and Emmanuel Mtera, following challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic founded, Vijana Tech, to help many young people facing unemployment to find jobs. Having met whilst studying at the Unique Academy College five years ago they partnered to build a digital product with the aim of providing community members with digital marketing skills training, allowing them to create income-generating and employment opportunities, leveraging their newfound digital skills. 

The platform raises the digital capacity of youth, through organised training sessions; online training; mentorship programmes and linking the youth to live, revenue-generating opportunities.  They target youth from all different backgrounds, who can be both in school or out of school but are still passionate about building their digital skills. Since it was founded, Vijana Tech has helped over 100 young people to grow their skills, helping youths to recognize the diverse opportunities which are available in the digital economy, and cultivate in them the skills and confidence needed to enable them to take advantage of those opportunities. The training is free and open to all. Vijana Tech was supported through the DOT Street Team programme, which supported youth at the frontline of tackling Covid-19 challenges. They plan to expand Vijana Tech into an academy, enabling them to reach even more youth who can harness technology to generate more sustainable income.  

Twitter: https://twitter.com/vijana_tech
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/techvijana
Website: https://www.vijanatech.com/
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Anastasia Goronga

Recognising that 264 million people globally suffer from depression, Anastasia Goronga wanted to help. Building out her range of aromatherapy products, Anastasia brought holistic healing treatment methods to those facing depression, enabling them to better their health and well-being. She first came up with the idea in her first job after graduation,  where she met a friend who suffered from depression. Researching holistic based interventions, and the various treatments and applications of aromatherapy products, led  Anastasia to establish her business Aroma Therapy, and move into a full-time role as the founder and entrepreneur. whilst being supported by the DOT Tanzania programme Daring to Change, Anastasia leveraged her education, experience and research to  To produce the materials used in her aromatherapy work, she imports organic essential oils from South Africa and other ingredients from Kenya. Anastasia hopes one day to open up her own clinic, a dedicated space for women and girls with mental health challenges, especially stress, depression and anxiety. 

Facebook: https://www.instagram.com/aromatherapytanzania/
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Mwang’ine Madenge 

Recognising there was a water distribution problem in the Mtwara and Lindi regions, Mwang’ine Madenge decided to leverage the resource of the Ndanda Spring and local technologies to bring water to hundreds of people. Having seen first-hand how much people were suffering from a lack of ready access to drinking water Mwang’ine rose to the challenge. Through his initiative Mwang’ine acquired 23 water tanks, each with the capacity for 5,000 litres of water, and set up various distribution sites throughout parts of Mtwara and Lindi towns. Ndana Spring Water is now readily available to local communities who, previous to this, found it difficult to access clean and safe drinking water as much of the water supplies in the southern administrative regions are salty. Alongside the distribution of the spring water through tanks, Mwang’ine also sells bottled water under the ‘Ndanda Spring Water’ brand. Mwang’ine project has additionally impacted many creating new opportunities for the youth and women in the region with small businesses who now have access to Ndanda Springwater to run their businesses. Mwang’ine was supported through ‘Daring to Shift’, a programme to develop and support the leadership and decision-making power of young people, enabling them to use these skills to generate social and economic growth in their communities. Mwang’ine also took part in the Street Team programme, aimed to support social enterprises innovating solutions at the frontline of COVID-19. 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mwangini-madenge-254b9b191/?originalSubdomain=tz
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If you are interested in learning more about DOT’s work or want to join us to empower youth digital skills, please get in touch: tanzania@v1.dotrust.org