Digitalisation Ghana Mr. Austin Hesse with Shani Alhassan Shaibu and teachers at the trainer of trainers workshop in Tamale
The Ministry of Communications and Digitalization’s Girls-In-ICT trainer of trainers workshop has commenced in Tamale in the Northern region.
The Girls in ICT Initiative starts with the training of teachers in areas such as Fundamentals in ICT, Scratch Programming (Coding), Cyber Security, Gaming, Website Development and Project Presentation and it is expected that the Teachers will continue the work of assisting and encouraging the girls to pursue ICT careers in later life.
The Director for Human Resources at Ministry of Communications and Digitalisation Ghana Mr. Austin Hesse, who read a statement on behalf of the minister, indicated that digital inclusion has become an increasing important part of everyday life, needed for success in both the classroom as well as the world of work, and in some contexts increasingly important for accessing services adding that traditional services such as banking, commerce, education and health are now digitalized.
“The ICT revolution is fast transforming the entire world of living and sooner than expected one will find life difficult to live if you are not a digital citizen. We are now being confronted with a growing fear that robotics and Artificial Intelligence could displace man in the world of work and in fact disrupt our economic and social life.”
He revealed that available statistics indicated that a good number of Ghanaians, particularly adolescent girls and young women have very limited digital skills and are disadvantaged in today’s digital economy.
“The demonstration of that fact can be seen in the number of ICT/STEM female teachers selected from the various communities to represent this region. Experts in the field are predicting that the world is gravitating towards an intelligent world, and we cannot afford to be left behind. It is for this reason that the Hon. Minister for Communications and Digitalisation (being herself a woman) has highly prioritized the Girls in ICT Initiative above other commitments. She started with enriching the content of the programme to make it more impactful, to increasing the frequency of implementation and the number of girls trained from 300 a few year ago to a whopping 5,000 girls and 500 IT/STEM Teachers annually.”
Mr. Hesse noted that more than 9,000 girls have so far been trained in the Girls in ICT initiative.
“ On May 9,2023 the Girls in ICT Initiative was climaxed in the Savannah Region after training about 1,000 girls and 100 teachers. The overarching goal is to encourage our girls and by extension our youth to take up careers in this lucrative ICT industry as well as become touch bearers in this life transformation agenda.”
The Northern Regional Minister, The Northern Regional Minister, Shani Alhassan Shaibu, encouraged all the participating teachers and ICT instructors to be trained to put in maximum efforts and pay attention to all details, and to enable them get insight into the basics of the training so as to enable them impact the knowledge onto the girls who shall be subsequently trained by them.
“The initiative will offer you all the opportunity to contribute your quotas to the overall objective of introducing the basics of ICT to our rural girl-child to enhance their capacities. We all have to play our roles to ensure the success of the programme. The participating teachers present, the Ghana Education Service and all partnering institutions should make commitments to put into good use all the various efforts by Government and Development Partners in the area of ICT to better the lives of our girls.”
By Eric Kombat, Tamale