Award-winning YoungAfricaLive youth mobile community partners with Safaricom - now live in Kenya

By Today Financial News Reporter

YoungAfricaLive (YAL) has launched in Kenya, adding substantially to the award-winning mobile community portal’s presence in East Africa which commenced when YAL Tanzania launched on December 1, 2011.ICT empowering youth

In bringing the vibrant mobile community to Kenya, Praekelt Foundation has partnered with leading integrated communications firm, Safaricom. This partnership allows young Kenyans to share and discuss the issues they confront daily, via their mobile phone.

YoungAfricaLive has already been launched by Vodacom South Africa and Tanzania. In Kenya it is now available through Safaricom’s SafaricomLIVE portal on www.safaricom.com/wap.

A 2005 study showed that 60 percent of Kenya’s unemployed are under 30, and where UNICEF statistics reveal 20 percent of the population live below the international poverty line of US$1.25 per day.  In addition, research published by the World Bank indicates that 6.3 percent of Kenya’s popular of 40.5 million is HIV positive, many of those young people.

Says Safaricom’s Director of Corporate Affairs, Nzioka Waita, “This partnership is key to our digital inclusion agenda. We believe that the best way to improve the utility and therefore take-up of the Internet among the youth of Africa and Kenya in particular, is by having relevant content on it and making it accessible to them. Being in the vanguard of the Internet explosion in Kenya, we have the network to deliver YoungAfricaLive’s socially relevant and well-packaged message to as many young Kenyans as possible.”

Safaricom has invested heavily in bringing Internet access to the Kenyan people. According to government data, nine out of every 10 Kenyans who access the Internet regularly do so through the Safaricom network.

“To follow-up a very successful launch in Tanzania late last year with YoungAfricaLive: Kenya is a great way to start 2012,” says Gustav Praekelt, founder of the Praekelt Foundation. “We are confident that young Kenyans will embrace the mobile platform with the same passion that their South African and Tanzanian counterparts have and use it to create a community that informs, supports and entertains.”

Launched by Praekelt Foundation in 2009 in South Africa, YoungAfricaLive started out as a way of providing young South Africans with free access to information on love, sex, relationships in a time of HIV/Aids through their mobile device. It has now turned into a community of engaged young people who use YoungAfricaLive to gain reliable information, discuss issues, have fun and gain the support and input of their peers.

YAL South Africa, in partnership with Vodacom, already has close to one million unique users while YAL Tanzania (also in partnership with Vodacom) has already established a strong presence in the country with a steadily growing user base since December 1, 2011.

Praekelt Foundation was acknowledged for the success of YoungAfricaLive by winning the regional and global gold awards for Social Impact at the Mobile Marketing Awards for Innovation, Creativity and Leadership in Los Angeles in November, 2011.

YoungAfricaLive was made available to Safaricom subscribers in Kenya earlier this week on January 23rd.

YoungAfricaLive has been developed for young guys and girls by the Praekelt Foundation and is supported by the Vodacom Foundation. YoungAfricaLive’s focus is on hearing real stories about the conflicting (and often confusing) worlds of sex, love and relationships, straight from the mouths of youth.

Users interact on the YoungAfricaLive mobile platform where a cross-section of young contributors from all over South Africa, Tanzania and now Kenya share their feelings and thoughts on relevant issues. Users can post comments and in so doing generate discussions.