In The Age of Digital Revolution, I Fight for Everyone to Be Included
We live a lot of our lives on the internet. It is where we meet, where we socialise, where we shop, and where we work. As the physical world encounters restrictive regimes that limit civil liberties, the internet has also become the modern day civic space — but with this comes its own dangers as a lot of the internet remains unregulated leaving users vulnerable to threats. The work that 2025 Young Activists Summit Laureate, Aminata Savané does to make sure that young people in Cote d’Ivoire protect themselves in online space is crucial now more than ever. As the Vice-President of Centre Marée de Lumière, the 26-year-old digital inclusion activist works to make the digital world safer for women, children, and young people.
My name is Aminata Savané, and I am an optimist.
I believe that young people have endless opportunities to create the change we want to see around us.
For the past five years, I have been an activist for digital education in my home country, Côte d’Ivoire. I advocate for digital education to be integrated into the national school curriculum. While we have policies to protect society from dangers on the internet, and even a police unit dedicated to cybercrime, we can contribute to our own online safety when we have the digital skills to defend ourselves. I want to instill a culture of online safety — a basic education accessible to all.
It all started in 2020, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Fake news was flooding the internet, with everyone giving their own take on how to cure the disease. COVID-19 wasn’t only a health crisis, the battle was also taking place online. In this context, UNICEF created a program, Young Bloggers, to train young people to become messengers of good information online. I was already involved in community work and always looking to strengthen my knowledge and skills, so I applied and was among 100 youths selected across the country. Our role was to create positive content, fact-check fake news, and provide people with accurate information.
The training strengthened my own digital literacy, but I couldn’t help thinking that thousands of young people of my generation don’t have these digital skills. I started feeling an urge to make my mark in this field.
That was when I met Marie-Lucienne N’Guessan, the founder of a nonprofit called Centre Marée de Lumière.
You don’t need to wait until you’re the head of an organization… Leadership isn’t a title, it is an attitude.
At Centre Marée de Lumière, we promote digital inclusion for women, children, and disadvantaged youths in Côte d’Ivoire.
The first program we developed was the Digital O’Féminin Tour, which saw us travel to remote towns to train young women over the course of five days. It was an introduction to digital technology with courses tailored to their everyday lives, including upskilling on e-commerce, content creation, and how to create your online identity, your brand.
We soon realized that we can train someone as much as we want, but if we haven’t been able to activate a push to action, our results may not reach our goals. So we added leadership and empowerment sessions to strengthen self-confidence. As of early 2026, we have trained more than 600 women through this program.
As the Vice-President of Centre Marée de Lumière, Aminata Savané works to make the digital world safer for women, children, and young people.
In 2025 we rolled out another project, Digital Dès la Base, focused on the younger generation, secondary school pupils. We set up clubs every Wednesday in selected schools, where children received training from instructors and, in the end, tested their knowledge in an inter-school competition. This program supported 200 pupils.
I also co-wrote a web usage guide for teenagers and young people with the UNICEF Young Bloggers. My generation went online without knowing anything about it, and we banged our heads quite a bit. We wanted to create a guide so young people would have a better idea of what to do: how to set privacy settings for a social media profile, how to create a strong password, and how to create content or run a digital campaign.
In the 21st century, anyone who cannot adapt to the accelerated development of digital technology can essentially be considered illiterate.
The challenges are growing. Especially with artificial intelligence, it has become essential to know how to use the internet properly and recognize when an image or a video is fake. These are skills that I think all young people should have — first for their own safety, but also so that they can use the internet to their advantage.
That is why my personal plea is that we integrate digital literacy in the school curriculum, so it can truly be provided across the country. Then, if we can do it in Côte d’Ivoire, it will also be possible in Senegal, Burkina Faso, Mali, Togo. Because things are moving really quickly out there and, while there are good people on the internet, there are also many with bad intentions. There is real danger.
Our nonprofit has limited means, and funding is our biggest challenge.
But we try to do what we can. Like the story of the hummingbird and the wildfire: if you can’t do everything, at least do your part. Take a drop of water and drop it on the flames. It can create movement, opportunities for the people we reach, and we hope it has a multiplier effect.
Being recognized by the Young Activist Summit was the right opportunity at the right time. I still smile just thinking about it. It confirmed my status as an advocate not only at the national level, but at the top of the world – because the United Nations are the top of the world. I learned afterwards that I am the very first Ivorian to have won this award since it was created in 2019. I was able to shine a light on my country and pave the way for international recognition of Ivorian leadership.
Aminata Savané is pictured at the Young Activists Summit 2025, in November 2025 at the Palais des Nations, Geneva.
The Young Activist Summit put the spotlight on me, but…
…there are many young people like me who are doing incredible and wonderful things. My ultimate goal is the United Nations, to reach the highest level and take the African community with me.
My advice to young people would be: trust yourself and start small, by creating change around you. You don’t need to wait until you’re the head of an organization — I am proof of that. Leadership isn’t a title, it is an attitude. It is about commitment and vision, so don’t give up. I will meet all the ambitious young people at the top.
I am the very first Ivorian to have won this [Young Activists Summit] award since it was created in 2019.
One day, I was in the north of Côte d’Ivoire, saying goodbye to the women on the last day of our program. After spending a whole week with them, it can be a bit difficult to leave. One lady came to me and said: “thanks to you, I was able to touch and turn on a computer for the first time in my life”. She had never done it before we came. It is feedback like this that strengthens my commitment. These testimonies cannot be found in books or in offices, you have to be in the field to hear them.
When a mother tells you: “I want my daughter to grow up to be like you,” I believe that we are shifting the mindset to the fact that a young girl can also go far. That a young girl also has the skills to lead.