Unlocking Opportunities in Youth Sexual Reproductive Health, Zanzibar | AMUA Accelerator Zanzibar
Zanzibar is a semi-autonomous region of Tanzania composed of the Zanzibar Archipelago in the Indian Ocean, 25–50 kilometers (16 -31 miles) off the coast of the mainland, and many small islands and two large ones: Unguja and Pemba Island. Zanzibar is experiencing a growing youth unemployment rate: according to the Labor Force Participation Survey 2014, 21.3% of Zanzibar unemployed adults are young people. Young women in particular are plagued with unemployment: 67% of unemployed youth are female. The increased urban youths population and unemployment create new challenges for Zanzibar. Youths are more exposed to risky behaviors; drug abuse, unsafe sex, prostitution, and other criminal activities.
This is the part AMUA Accelerator Zanzibar comes in, creating business opportunities around it also solving the SRH problem in Zanzibar.
The Journey of AMUA Accelerator
AMUA Accelerator is a mentorship-driven acceleration program supporting young entrepreneurs with seed funding, training, and skills development to generate innovative solutions in response to challenges related to sexual and reproductive health, sexuality education, family planning, maternal health, and other population development issues. AMUA Accelerator is implemented by Sahara Ventures in partnership with UNFPA.
AMUA Accelerator successfully ran 3 Cohorts;
The first cohort is known as AMUA 1, which targeted challenges facing youth concerning Teenage Pregnancy. You can read more about AMUA I here;
https://medium.com/amua-accelerator/about-amua-accelerator-9f4b4f28cf16
https://medium.com/@venturessahara/amua-accelerator-demo-day-dda6c3054a12
The Second Cohort named AMUA II aimed at solving challenges facing People with Disabilities (PWDs). The cohort is well articulated in “AMUA Innovation Accelerator 2.0 Learning Report”
https://saharaventures.com/publication
The third cohort, AMUA Innovate for Data aimed at bridging the data gap in sexual reproductive health. You can check more about the program here; https://medium.com/sahara-ventures/mapping-the-srh-data-ecosystem-in-tanzania-c2db16e4475d
Every cohort opened the call to innovators that will come with ideas and solutions that will help in addressing the challenge, where both cohorts have been coming with four Business Ideas in each emerging winner and supported with Seed Fund.
AMUA Accelerator Zanzibar
In October 2021, the implementation of the fourth cohort of AMUA Accelerator named AMUA Accelerator began. Sahara Sparks is committing itself to work in Zanzibar with the UNFPA Tanzania country office to develop an acceleration program that will be able to foster and mentor innovative youth ideas that will generate solutions to the addressed SRH.
AMUA Accelerator Zanzibar is focusing on accelerating innovative SRH solutions emerging from Zanzibarian youths. This is the first health innovation accelerator program for the Isles(Unguja and Pembe). The goal is to identify, mentor, accelerate and invest in ideas, products, and solutions that will address Zanzibar SRH challenges.
AMUA Zanzibar Implementation
- Inception Meeting(Stakeholders Engagement)
The team traveled to both isles to perform the project Inception. The activity aimed to meet with key relevant officials from the Revolutionary government of Zanzibar, Visit Youth backed organizations working with youth, Visit Women lead organizations working with women specifically young girls, and Visit organizations working on issues related to Reproductive Health.
In Pemba, the team visited all 4 Districts in Pemba ( Chake Chake, Wete, Mkoani, and Micheweni), met all Youth Friendly Services Centre (YFS) in each District attended and spoke to youth representing the centers, and visited 12 NGOs working with youth and Womens in Pemba
In Unguja the team visited UNFPA — Zanzibar office, ZAPHA+, ZAYEDESA, ZACAIDS, Cube Innovation Hub, Kusini Unguja — Youth Officer, Zanzibar University (ZA), ZAFAYCO, and The Ministry of Youth in Zanzibar.
- Challenge Definition
The team performed a challenge definition as part of defining this Cohorts theme. 30 people participated in his session including SRHR youth, Innovators, and Women stakeholders.
The participants were taken through a program and later prepared tools to capture challenges shared by them. From the activity, four challenges were derived;
- How might we come up with innovative solutions to impact Zanzibarian youths at the individual level by providing age-appropriate right information?
- How might we support the availability of proper knowledge and services to Zanzibarian youth with a special focus on young girls on menstrual hygiene issues?
- How might we support Zanzibarian youth especially young girls joining their early careers with dangerous and nonethical practices (Including sexual practices) at working areas especially those involved in tourism Industries
- How shall we Increase awareness to the community on Social-cultural issues leading to teenage marriages and pregnancies?
- How might we support the increase in Male involvement and awareness on Sexual reproduction health and rights?
The Challenge statement derived from this activity is the Instrumental tools to be used during the sourcing for Ideas to solve SRHR Challenges for the youth of Zanzibar with a special focus on a young girl
- Project Launch
On 15th December the AMUA Accelerator Zanzibar Project was Launched. The event was also graced by the Minister of Youth, Culture, and Arts Ms. Tabia Maulid Mwita as our Guest of Honor, Director of Youth at the Ministry as well as ZACAIDS Directors.
During this event, participants were taken through the Draft Challenge Statement received during the Challenge definition exercise for their Validation, through the exercise some of the statements were challenged and Improved, Some were slightly edited to correctly align with the actual situation of the challenges at the Isles. The challenge statement was thereafter validated as follows;
- How might we come up with innovative solutions to impact Zanzibarian youths at the individual level by providing age-appropriate right information?
- How might we support the availability of proper knowledge and services to Zanzibarian youth on puberty and menstrual health?
- How might we support Zanzibarian youth joining their early careers with Sexual exploitation and abuse in employment sectors including tourism, health, and education?
- How shall we Increase awareness to the community on Social-cultural issues leading to teenage marriages and pregnancies?
- How might we support the increase in Male involvement and awareness of Sexual reproduction health and rights?
- Community Engagement
To create awareness of the project, the team did the Info sessions, stakeholder visits, and Media visits. In the Info sessions, youth were given an overview of the SRH awareness and the current situation, a project overview plus provided with a detailed explanation of each challenge statement as well as the way to participate as part of the call for application. The stakeholder visits were also looking for potential areas of synergy for partnership.
The engagement was done in both isles, 3 info sessions in Unguja and 3 info sessions in Pemba. The activity reached over 60 youth with the help of Mr. Ubwa who is the Unguja South Youth Officer and the Bi Farida An SRH Expert. The stakeholders our team got to visit include; ZAYEDESA, ZAPHA+, ZAYCO, PIRO, Cube Zanzibar, Zanzibar University, YEMBA (Youth Entrepreneurship). For the Media coverage, from the launch, the Traditional Media was covered by Daily News, ZBC TV, and ZBC Radio. The social media platforms used were Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter
- Hackathon
The team conducted a total of 4 hackathons, 2 in each Isle.
In Unguja, the first hackathon covered the Southern part of Unguja ( Kusini Unguja ) accommodating most Universities and youth. The hackathon was organized at Zanzibar University and attended by 71 youth. Out of 71 participants, 11 teams were formed after different hackathon activities, two teams got a straight ticket to attend the next stage of the project which is Bootcamp. The Second Hackathon conducted in Unguja was in Stone Town attended by 25 Youths forming 5 teams and two teams won tickets to go straight to the Bootcamp.
In Pemba, the first hackathon combined 44 youth from ChakeChake and Mkoani forming 7 teams, and the second hackathon combined 42 Youth from Wete and Micheweni District forming 8 teams.
In the hackathon, youth were supported to form teams and were taken through Team Building exercise, Received SRHR awareness from the SRH Mentors, and were supported with Design thinking and Ideation support from a Design Thinking expert.
- Call for Application
Since the launch of the project the windows were open for every youth of Zanzibar to submit ideas that can solve SRH challenges s for Zanzibar Youth
The journey is still on and we are getting ready for the bootcamp for the selected ideas.
