This morning, i had a group chat with two of my siblings who are more than 13 hours by road from where i currently reside. They filled me in on family details and even made my mouth watery by telling me about a huge family size chocolate bar that currently lies in the fridge waiting to be devoured by them tonight. With around a dollar per hour, i have this immense opportunity to talk to friends, do research online, respond to emails and even contribute to online discussions like this. It is heartwarming also to know that a huge percentage of people who have made this possible (technology wise) are young people, or were young people when they started out. A recent example is Facebook whose CEO is in his twenties, what started as an opportunity for friends to link each other as turned into a huge business where a 1% slice of it was sold to Microsoft for 1 billion dollars. Africa is missing out from these action; despite the fact that technology now provides an opportunity for us to catch up with developed countries, we are not taking advantage of it. In Nigeria, learning to use the computer is what you decide on your own. There are quite a number of schools that teach computer education (mostly privately owned and fee paying), but there is no deliberate government action to ensure that the average child have acces to computer education. It is disheartening, that nations in Africa are still building a workforce who cannot compete globally because they do not have an IT edge. If there is one way to go for countries: it is IT. We have seen how the GSM revolution had completely changed hard-to-reach regions in Africa, connecting farming villages to markets and allowing them to monitor price of goods and services in urban areas. Phone recharge cards are easily convertible into money and a lot of people have built small businesses around offering people a chance to make a call on their phone lines for a fee. Harnessing IT for youth empowerment and economic development is essential. Infact, Facebook, you-tube and the rest of them have changed the face of American election campaigns for life through young people makong use of IT tools.