Accra, Feb 24, GNA- Mrs Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, Minister of Communications and Digitisation, has tasked the governing board of the Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT (AITI-KACE) to help improve revenue mobilisation of the Centre to deliver more ICT services to Ghanaians.
“Mr. Chairman, given the potential of the Centre, I would urge the Board to marshal all efforts to pay particular attention to helping management to improve the revenue generation capabilities of the Centre.”
The Minister said this during the swearing-in of a nine-member board of the Centre in Accra.
The board, chaired by Mr Kwame Owusu also has Dr Tony Bediako, Dr Maria Lovelace Johnson, Mr Eric Agyeman and Madam Kesewaa Brown, as members.
Others are; Mr Kwabena Afum-Dankwa, Dr Collins Yeboah Afari, Mr Francis K. Boachie and Ms Farida Bedwei.
Mrs Owusu-Ekuful noted that the Centre, the country’s first Advanced Information Technology Institute, had built the capacity of more than 40,000 students in Ghana, and other parts of the continent since its inception.
She said those high-end skilled personnel churned out were contributing significantly to their respective nations and in various fields in the public and private sectors and attributed it to the quality demonstrated in the Centre’s rigorous hands-on curriculum, an experienced faculty, and the high value Ghana’s industry placed on the Centre’s products.
She said in the last few years, AITI-KACE had opened Centres in Sunyani and Bolgatanga with the aim of expanding its operations to cater for the middle and northern belts of Ghana.
“This has yielded much fruit, as the Bolgatanga Resource Centre for instance, developed Ghana’s first fully-functional GNU/Linux Operating system –The Nyansapo OS (NOSS).
The Minister disclosed that AITI-KACE had also signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Ministry of Education to explore the core IT curriculum of the GES, adding that the Centre had stepped up the development of several IT and e-Government solutions to promote integration of ICT in the operations of the Public and Civil Services.
Again, the Centre has developed the e-Asset system for managing public assets from procurement to decommissioning, the e-leave app for light human resource management functions and the cashless e-Invoicing platform for processing of non-tax revenue and receipts/payments.
“Furthermore, we want to position KACE as the IT finishing school in the public sector to ensure the IT class attains or acquires minimum standards of proficiency in jobs, like GIMPA has done for Public Administration,” the Minister said.
She called on the board to focus on urgent areas, including securing funding to scale-up digital skills training to promote the digital economy; collaborating with key stakeholders to drive research and capacity building activities and visibility and wide adoption of AITI-KACE e-Government solutions.
She said that would enable the Centre to expand its office and operational space especially in Accra, as well as build capacity and motivation for staff to drive revenue generation.
Mr Owusu, Board Chair, expressed the board’s readiness to deliver on its mandate and move the Centre to a higher pedestal.
The AITI-KACE was established in 2003 through Mr Kofi Annan, the then UN Secretary General, former President John Agyekum Kufuor and a partnership between the Government of India and Ghana.
The Centre works to stimulate the growth of the ICT Sector in the ECOWAS sub–region and beyond.
GNA