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

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.