PROFILED: Introducing YoMobi with Jason Bygate

CTIN presents to you their database through profiles and our first profiled initiative is YoMobi.

CTIN is excited to present a series of monthly profile articles on various African civic tech initiatives. We recently caught up with Jason Bygate, Founder of YoMobi and Director of Innovation and Digital Transformation at Capacitate Social Solutions, based in Johannesburg South Africa.

Jason is passionate about youth empowerment and development. He explained that “YoMobi is a powerful mobile platform developed [to] enhance youth learning, engagement and support. It was development was in support with organisations such as UNICEF and PwC. The platform helps organisations bridge the digital divide, providing them with a digital tool suite that they could use to enhance and scale their programmes’’.

Why start YoMobi?

Jason: ‘’YoMobi was started to help organisations bridge the digital divide, providing them with a digital tool suite that they could use to enhance and scale their programmes. The content is dependent on the implementing partner. The platform provides them with the tools, but they are responsible for building with them.’’

Initial desired Impact

Jason: ‘’To some extent, there remains a barrier with adoption and usage, organisations have limited capacity and time to effectively adopt and implement the solution. As a B2B offering this remains a key barrier’’.

‘’However, currently there are over 160 organisations registered on the platform and almost 15000 youth registered. There are still barriers to adoption and use that we need to overcome to allow the initiative to reach its full potential’’.

Challenges addressed by the initiative

According to Jason, there are 2 core challenges that the initiative aims to address:

1) The digital divide within civil society — providing organisations that work with youth with tools to enhance and scale their outcomes

2) Youth skills, access to opportunities, access to services and peer engagement.

Initiative Implementation challenges faced

user adoption remains an issue. We have attempted to ease this issue by providing more direct onboarding support and assistance with content creation

Biggest Lesson learned

Jason: “There are no “fields of dreams” when it comes to technology. Even if you have the best system user adoption still needs to be aggressively driven”

Future of Civic Tech

Jason reflects on the future of civic tech in the context our globalised technological advancements: ‘’AI will be a key driver, hopefully democratizing technology further and making it more accessible to individuals and organizations’’.

Link to database entry: https://civictech.africa/initiative/yomobi/