The development of innovation and technology is being placed at the centre of policies for young people, as one of the main pillars for the country’s economic and social future. Prime Minister Edi Rama held a discussion today with the youth of Gjirokastër, where he underlined the importance of technological innovation, the encouragement of entrepreneurship, and concrete support for innovative ideas.

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Prime Minister Edi Rama: Well, thank you very much!

First, I am very pleased that here in the municipality of Gjirokastër, there have been positive developments regarding young people’s access to innovation, and the fact that two schools from Gjirokastër received awards at the National Innovation Festival, organised for the first time by the Ministry of Education.

At the same time, we all must be fully aware that the world of innovation is now a world that changes every hour, not every day, and nothing we have done until yesterday or even until this morning is enough for what we need to do today by the evening, meaning the necessity to invest more energy, more effort, and, of course, more financial resources.

We have had a path, not an easy one, in this aspect, but now we see that some paths have opened, which are increasingly being taken mainly by young people. For example, with our startup programme, we started with only 40 applications, and today, not many years later, we have around 1,500 or more applications.

This, naturally, has put us in a position to intervene again to increase funding, because we will certainly have to carry out a selection through the mechanisms that have been set up for this work. We will not only need to increase funding for our startup programme, but we will also need to find ways to increase funding precisely for those who are still in school or university, so without waiting for them to finish school or university. I believe we will begin this with the next festival, where, in addition to prizes and honorary recognitions accompanied by a computer, we will need to find a way to finance those prototypes presented that have potential to be further developed. In this way, those behind them, students in this case, or university students will begin to think differently, not simply to win a competition among their peers, but to create a product that is valuable for the market.

Because what technology has brought is a complete overturning of the entire hierarchy of values, if we can put it this way, which are built over time in the traditional system of linear progress, by proving to us that very young girls and boys can be extraordinary innovators on the path of exponential progress, which is a completely different trajectory from the progress we have been used to in history.

Having said all this, I believe it is also worth adding that we will continue to equip the entire school system with smart laboratories, to give all children access to technology from the very first steps of schooling, and on the other hand, we will work very hard to invest more in artificial intelligence, in digital data centres, and so on.

I do not want to go on at length with words that you can hear in other forms as well, but since we are here together, with great pleasure I would give the floor to you as well if you have anything to ask, anything to say, anything to suggest, or anything to criticise.