Abuja, Nigeria – “We use this app to give young girls a tool for safety. If something happens, with a click of a button, a message is sent to family members with a call for help and their location.” This is one of a number of pitches the UN Youth Envoy heard at her visit to the Civic Innovation Hub, which provides a unique space, with high speed internet, co-creation sorroundings, and a relaxing environment with which to develop, find financing and roll out their ideas.

The centre provides working spaces where young innovators can work without worrying about the costs associated with setting up a business office space. This allow and facilitates innovation and testing of great ideas that reach broad spectrum of young people and marketplace. Ideas like that of another pitch presented to the Youth Envoy on the development of a solar driven auto rickshaw, which has an electric motor, is cheap to develop and run, and whose developer says can revolutionise the local transport space in Nigeria and shows promise for renewable energy driven automobiles in Nigeria.

The Hub has given rise to great ideas and is promoting young people’s engagement in their own development, including political processes. As part of the #NotTooYoungToRun campaign that rose from Nigeria, one of the pitches head by the Youth Envoy developed a web engine for political campaigns, providing tools for budding young politicians to create online platforms to communicate with their supporters, collect resources and showcase their message.

Speaking to a concluding roundtable discussion after her tour, the Youth Envoy recognised the leadership and facilitative role the Civic Innovation Hub was playing. Noting the fast changing labor market space, where the type of skills needed are emerging and changing rapidly, the Youth Envoy challenged the Hub to be a space that promotes capacity building and development of new skills.

The Youth Envoy finalises her mission in Africa with her last stop in South Africa immediately after Nigeria.