Thirteen universities from East Africa will be participating in a social media challenge dubbed “Connect Vuka Border” in the next three months, aimed at sensitising young people on regional integration.
Connect Vuka Border, Swahili for “cross the border”, is organised by East African Community Students Union (EASCU) in partnership with the East African Community (EAC).
“The social media drive aims to educate the youth on the integration process, raise awareness on the benefits they stand to gain from it and report on the progress made so far in making it a reality,” the organisers said.
“Connect Vuka Border” will use the power of social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter. Each participating university will host a week-long sensitisation campaign to educate their members on how to engage on the platforms.
“The university challenge comes at time when MEAC [Ministry of East African Community] has embarked on a campaign to educate Kenyans on the benefits of integration and the progress made so far in making integration a reality,” said Musa Sirma, the Kenyan Minister for the EAC, during the launch at The Multimedia University College East Africa.
The EACSU president George Yogo said: “This is an exciting campaign whereby we are engaging the students on social media to constructively discuss what can build them. We are fortunate that this is coming when Kenya has just been appointed to head the EASCU in recent election in Arusha.”
The organisers have already created a Facebook page for the competition: Facebook.com/connectvukaborder and twitter handle @cvukaborder.
The winners, to be announced at the East Africa Community Summit on November 30 in Nairobi, will have a fully paid trip around the member states of the EAC. They will visit universities in the East African region and blog about their experiences in the countries.
The programme also intends to petition the vice chancellors of the participating universities to entrench the EAC week in their school calendars. The competition kicked off on September 17.
