Abstract
As the world advances rapidly and economic conditions continue to change, issues such as globalization and changing labour markets are putting a huge pressure on youth worldwide. There is an urgent need for young people to be trained with flexible set of skills that will allow them to take the front seat and actively contribute to initiatives directly affect their development. The first step towards addressing the pressing concerns of today’s youth, especially in Africa, involves improving the existing education systems. This paper elaborates curriculum improvement in education systems by adapt a human centered design (HCD) and Challenge-Driven Education (CDE) approaches that encourages students to work on projects that address real challenges solicited from industry partners. Youth for Children (Y4C) innovation hub, a partnership between UDSM college of ICT (CoICT) and UNICEF Tanzania, was established in 2016 to promote child rights and provide the design skills and social context to support students in developing products and solutions with real social value. Y4C Hub provides unique value in its emphasis on HCD and CDE approaches where projects are undertaken for a period of one year and are directly linked to solving real challenges facing the society in collaboration with the challenge owners and mentors. In the year since launching the hub, 173 CoICT students, 36 supervisors, and 50 secondary school girls have been trained on HCD. A Final Year Project course curriculum has been reviewed to reflect a more challenge driven approach, offering a chance for promising projects to be incubated.
Supported by UNICEF.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Anza: Innovation ecosystem in Tanzania (2017). http://anza.co.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/the-innovation-ecosystem-of-tanzania-compressed.pdf. Accessed 13 Oct 2018
Apps & Girls: Entrepreneurship summit (2017). http://www.appsandgirls.com/summit/. Accessed 19 Oct 2018
Bandera, C., Thomas, E.: The role of innovation ecosystems and social capital in startup survival. IEEE Trans. Eng. Manag. (99), 1–10 (2018)
Bingham, A., Spradlin, D.: The Open Innovation Marketplace: Creating Value in the Challenge Driven Enterprise. Ft press, Upper Saddle River (2011)
Bonadio, S.: How to accelerate innovation through challenge driven innovations (2011). http://www.innovationmanagement.se/2011/10/17/how-to-accelerate-innovation-through-challenge-driven-innovation/. Accessed 1 Oct 2018
Carayannis, E.G., Meissner, D.: Glocal targeted open innovation: challenges, opportunities and implications for theory, policy and practice. J. Technol. Transf. 42(2), 236–252 (2017)
Jackson, D.J.: What is an innovation ecosystem? (2011) http://erc-assoc.org/sites/default/files/topics/policy_studies/DJackson_Innovation%20Ecosystem_03-15-11.pdf. Accessed 19 Oct 2018
NBS: Tanzania in figures 2015 (2016). http://www.nbs.go.tz/nbs/takwimu/references/Tanzania_in_Figures_2015.pdf. Accessed 12 Oct 2018
UN News: Youth2030: Un chief launches bold new strategy for young people to lead (2018). https://news.un.org/en/story/2018/09/1020302. Accessed 12 Oct 2018
Nielsen, J.: Usability Engineering. Elsevier, Amsterdam (1994)
Norman, D.A.: The Psychology Of Everyday Things. (The Design Of Everyday Things) (1988)
Prahalad, C.K., Ramaswamy, V., et al.: Co-opting customer competence. Harv. Bus. Rev. 78(1), 79–90 (2000)
Shniederman, B.: Designing the user interface: strategies for effective human-computer interaction. Pearson Education India, Boston (2010)
IDEO: Human Centered Design Process (2018). https://www.ideo.org/approach. Accessed 21 Oct 2018
Principles for Digital Development (2018). https://digitalprinciples.org/. Accessed 21 Oct 2018
Acknowledgement
This material is based upon work supported by UNICEF Tanzania. The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of UNICEF and UDSM or any agency thereof.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing
About this paper
Cite this paper
Maziku, H., Cosmas, J., Maki, N., Kimaro, H., Otine, C. (2019). The Role of Human Centered Design (HCD) and Challenge Driven Education in Enhancing the Innovation Capacity of Africa’s Young People: Case of Youth for Children (Y4C) Innovation Hub in Tanzania. In: Nielsen, P., Kimaro, H. (eds) Information and Communication Technologies for Development. Strengthening Southern-Driven Cooperation as a Catalyst for ICT4D. ICT4D 2019. IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, vol 552. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19115-3_30
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19115-3_30
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-19114-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-19115-3
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)
