As a part of their Higher Education Solutions Network, USAID awarded $22 million to create four Resilience Innovation Labs in four different regions of the African continent: South (South Africa), East (Uganda), Horn of Africa (Ethiopia), and West (Ghana). The goal is to create resilient solutions and bring innovation to large, complex issues in Africa.
The project's aim is to help generate crosscutting programs centered on the development of digital platforms. The idea is for these platforms to deliver scaled solutions, provide the education and skills needed for employment opportunities, strengthen local governance; and to enable indigenous communities to create their own solutions to address pervasive challenges, such as control of infectious diseases and drought.
This project seeks to reframe the ways in which digital platforms can be used for education, access to resources, entrepreneurship, and access to employment opportunities. As such, this capacity building is important for Africa's future.
A team has been tasked with creating a large-scale strategy that can leverage digital and mobile connectivity to create the right combination of capacity and educational platforms for highly distributed rural communities. There is a special focus on serving countries, such as Uganda, with underserved urban areas.