Accra, Ghana//-The World Bank-funded eTransform Ghana Project is helping Ghana to bridge its digital divide gap.
At this year’s World Bank Youth Summit held in Accra last Thursday, it was revealed that the number of young females who participated in digital technology, innovations and other ICT training has surpassed that of their male counterparts.
Of the total participation of 33,854 people who participated in digital tech, and innovation trainings and programmes conducted by Ghana Tech Lab, Ghana Innovation Hub, and Kumasi Business Incubator, 18,579 were females, while 15,275 were males.
The Senior Digital Development Specialist at the World Bank Ghana, Madam Kaoru Kimura who disclosed this at the day’s summit indicated that the women formed 53.7% of the total participants in the digital skills acquisition.
These youth according to her have been provided with digital skills in robotics, business development, graphic design, social media management, accounting, and artificial intelligence.
She mentioned mobile app development, creative writing, videography, virtual reality, gaming, animation, photography, sound engineering training programs, programming, 3D printing, and web development.
Madam Kimura noted that the Digital Development Global Practice of the World Bank is also supporting the youth digital transformation agenda under the eTransform Ghana Project as well as the Ghana Digital Acceleration Project (GDAP), in collaboration with the Ministry of Communication and Digitalisation (MoCD) and other partners (KACE, Ghana Digital Centre, GEA, VCTF, among others.
Re-start programme
Furthermore, the Government of Ghana through the Ministry of Communications and Digitalisation with support from the World Bank in 2023 launched the re-start programme to train 1,440 young people in digital skills leading to career pathways in emerging technologies over four months.
The training programmes took place in Accra, Bolgatanga, Kumasi, and Sunyani, all in the Greater Accra, Upper East, Ashanti, and Bono regions respectively.
The 1,440 young participants were taken through courses such as Data Analytics with Power BI, Data Analytics with Python, Cybersecurity, Microsoft AI, and Data Science.
Upcoming opportunities under GDAP
Touching on upcoming opportunities under GDAP, Madam Kimura said plans were at foot to scale up Ghana’s Digital Entrepreneurship and Innovation Ecosystem.
She added that tech hubs would be scaled up across the country, while an international accelerator programme that serves digital start-ups would be launched.
Digital skills training for employment pathways Ø Digital inclusion programs for Persons with Disabilities (PwDs) would come on board.
Advice
During a panel discussion, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Information of the University of Ghana, Dr Patience Emefa Dzandza Ocloo; Senior Manager of Digital Channels at MTN Ghana, Emmanuel Gamor; and the CEO of Ampersand Technologies Ltd, Lady Omega advised the youth who are mainly social entrepreneurs to work together instead of working in silos.
Instructively, the World Bank Youth Summit, 2024 was held in Ghana with the global theme: ‘Powering Progress: Youth Leading the Digital Transformation’.
The Youth Summit, organized by the World Bank through its Youth-to-Youth community in the last eleven years, is a global convening of young people aimed at discussing the world’s most pressing issues.
The Summit spotlights diverse youth-led initiatives and surfaces key constraints and opportunities for growth and collaboration through dialogues, showcases, pitch events and other interactive sessions.
The Ghana Youth Voices (GYV), a chapter of the World Bank Youth-to-Youth Community drives the global conversations and grounds action locally.
It exists to strengthen youth engagement with the World Bank Ghana office and to lead the conversation on the importance of inclusive youth integration in development issues in Ghana and within the Western and Central Africa region of the World Bank.
