#MyLittleBigThing

Africa has the largest concentration of young people in the world. According to the United Nations, 226 million youth aged 15-24 lived in Africa in 2015 representing nearly 20% of Africa’s population, making up one-fifth of the world’s youth population. If one includes all people aged below 35, this number increases to staggering three-quarters of Africa’s population. Moreover, the share of Africa’s youth in the world is forecasted to increase to 42% by 2030 and is expected to continue to grow throughout the remainder of the 21st century, more than doubling from current levels by 2055.

The youth are therefore critical agents for accelerated economic growth and innovation on the continent. Unemployment or underemployment, and lack of social security, educational opportunities, and inclusive governance can, however, drive youth to informal or even criminal activities. Investing in human capital such as tertiary education, vocational training, skills development, and encouraging entrepreneurship is critical in harnessing the potential of an Africa, whose development is people-driven, relying on the potential of African people, especially its women and youth.  The Sustainable Development Goals will not be achieved without the active engagement and contribution of Africa’s youth in identifying their priorities and partnering with relevant stakeholders to foster the robust implementation of the various development priorities.  

In light of this, MK-Africa through the #MyLittleBigThing initiative has an ambitious strategy to harness the potential of youth to drive forward Africa’s transformative agenda.  Our goal is to catalyze social entrepreneurship among young people through the development of ideas that will help find the best homegrown solutions to Africa’s development challenges.  We have therefore collaborated with like-minded organizations to run the #MyLittleBigThing SDGs Innovation Challenge since 2017. 

Over the last 4 years, and with the support of partners like Safaricom, PKF East Africa, Cambridge University’s Institute of Sustainability Leadership (CISL), Crew 2030, and South African Airways, we have been able to reach close to 1000 youth innovators who have some of the best SDGs-inspired ideas. 

We have offered them SDGs and Sustainability training as well as mentorship in design thinking, social entrepreneurship, and leadership.  We are especially focused on empowering young people in universities as our goal is for them to leverage their university’s administrative and student networks when developing their ideas for thriving social enterprises.

According to the 2019 SDGs Accord report, most tertiary institutions rate themselves as falling short when it comes to training and support in the partnerships, society, and engagement framework around the SDGs. Additionally, MK-Africa recently partnered with TIFA Research to conduct a survey to understand youth awareness and perceptions towards the SDGs.  The target respondents were students from 42 universities across Kenya aged between 18 and 35 years. A total of total 622 students participated and the sample distribution was aligned to the student population in the various universities.  The survey revealed that the average awareness for the 17 SDGs for university students in Kenya stands at 45% as compared to 54% globally.  The SDGs with the highest awareness (+60%) are SDG 3 (Good Health and Wellbeing), SDG 4 (Quality Education), SDG 5 (Gender Equality) SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation). 

Those with medium awareness (between 50%-59%) are SDG 1 (No Poverty) and SDG 2 (Zero Hunger). The remaining SDGs have a low awareness of less than 50%. The research also revealed that there little or no formal training or support of the SDGs. Prior to this research, the #MyLittleBigThing challenge did not lay focus on any specific SDGs and students could choose to develop their ideas based on any of the 17 goals.  Following the survey, and in recognizing the broadness of the goals, we came to the decision to take a thematic approach to address the SDGs through the #MyLittleBigThing Challenge.  We, therefore, aligned our efforts with Africa’s SDGs priorities as follows:

• The 2019 #MyLittleBigThing Challenge was centered on SDGs 1 – 5 or is sometimes referred to as the ‘Unfinished Business from the MDGs’.   
• In 2020, the focus was on SDGs 6 – 11, or ‘New Business not covered by the MDGs’.

In 2021, the #MyLittleBigThing SDGs Challenge will be looking to cover the ‘Green Agenda’ or SDGs 12 – 15.