ICT FOR CHILDREN: Don't deny them!

By Andrew H. PHIRI

-The Mindset Operator

LUSAKA-In 2014, I visited Life Community School located at Deeper Life Bible Church National Headquarters in Lusaka to see how the computer age was approached. Good enough, I was impressed with the investment made and the roadmap developed on ICT for pupils at the school.

Today, work is done on computer and online-

I saw children from underprivileged backgrounds playing with the mouse. These children wore a face with great hope for the future; in turn this triggered their happiness. So I sat down to analyze the importance of ICT for children.

To all of us, Information Computer Technology (ICT) is both pertinent and urgent matter requiring the needed attention. Serious enough, focusing it on ICT for children.

Currently, it is probable that the economy is not performing up to expectation. This trend has shifted the attention of many form various socio-economic pursuits. Little wonder economists and other relevant professionals are laboring to make a point known, and probably corrected in reference to what went wrong in the past. It is said that the older generation missed a point in their preparation for the future (present).

However, at the heart of this memory tasking, energy supping and time consuming economic effort, ICT for children specifically is the way to go. Because the future must be brighter.

The ministry of General Education has also admitted facing innumerable challenges hence the need for various stakeholders to get involved and help build a better ICT generation.

Indeed, Zambia needs a built safe and friendly ICT environment than ever before. Denying it now will mean that the future will miss on novelty and eventually sustainable national development.

An investment into the sector is what is needed to help young people get exposed to various cause  in both their short and long term development. ICT will open minds to new knowledge, equip hands with new skills and combine efforts for a better society.

It is a science that establishes cause of lagging in innovation and effect of backwardness in diversity of political, social, cultural and economic stand of the nation, Zambia.

Life School pupils enjoying computer time.

It is an art that simply will teach the young generation in the country ‘to do’ hence a necessary door for all-round youth empowerment.

ICT will bring up girls in the country who will decide to use information to exit the shell of inferiority complex and give them a better stand in society. Culture and tradition will be refined to meet common ground for sustained unity, togetherness and collaboration.

Young people will bring home that which our citizens go for to other countries, create a greener pasture, those who have left to see sense in the country and think of returning.

With ICT prioritized in our education system, learning will make sense. It will lead us into the said realm of the impossible and conquer all setbacks for lasting progress, prosperity and power. Education will then create us a standard which propels our own to believe our own to achieve great.

Every day that passes by leaves us in a gap. A gap that sometimes makes us regret that we did not do enough in the past to have a better today.It is a haunt which if not dealt with today, will make every today wasted and the future denied.

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