Girls-in-ICT: Ursula Owusu-Ekuful tours three ICT training centres in Tamale
Briefing the media after her visit to the centres, the minister said she was impressed with the quality of training given to the beneficiaries
The Minister for communications and digitalisation, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, has toured three training centres for the Girls-in-ICT programme in Tamale and Sagnarigu.
Briefing the media after her visit to the centres, the minister said she was impressed with the quality of training given to the beneficiaries.
“I have been very impressed with the quality of instructions that they’ve received from their facilitators and how they have also applied themselves to the knowledge that they’ve received,” she said.
The minister noted that her outfit have already trained some 100 selected teachers who are currently taking the selected 1,000 girls from primary to Junior High School level through the training from all the districts in the Region.
The minister indicated that her visit to the centres was to witness the actual training herself where the beneficiaries at the end of the training will have both practical and theory exams.
The best 100 girls with the top performers after the exams will be awarded personal laptops whilst the top 20 beneficiaries will get computer laboratories in their respective schools.
She noted that there was the need to equip the youth, especially the young girls to be able to succeed in the new world that is unfolding.
“Without equipping them with the skills, no matter what infrastructure you put in place you have to import expensive consultants to manage that infrastructure for you”, Owusu-Ekuful said.
The training is also aimed at equipping beneficiaries with basic information and communications technology (ICT), website development, coding skills among others.
Touching on the theme for this year’s Girls-in-ICT is “Digital skills for life.”, she noted that more boys have skills in the ICT and digital space than girls and that is why the project is focusing on the girls now to let them know that ICT is not just a male dominated field but the females can also do much better.
Owusu-Ekuful, however, urged the girls to take the training seriously because the skills they will acquire will be useful in future no matter where they find themselves.
The best 100 girls after the end of a competition will spend the week in Accra to interact with technology-related institutions such us MTN, Vodafone Ghana, Airtel Tigo, NCA,GIFEC, MoCD among others.
The minister also visited the Dabokpa Technical Institute and the Ghana Senior High School in Tamale as part of the electronic transform project, which is in collaboration with the MoCD and the Ghana Education Service.
Connectivity, according to the minister, will also be extended to communities through the Ghana Rural Telephony and Digital Inclusion project.
The Northern regional minister Alhaji Shani Alhassan Shaibu, who expressed worry about the sustainability of the project, call on the sector minister to extend the project to other schools in the area.
He added that more ICT infrastructure should also be considered.
Reporting by Tahiru Abdul-Washiru in the Northern Region
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