By Albert Futukpor
Tamale, July 29, GNA – Mrs Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, Minister for Communications and Digitalisation, as part of activities for the Girls-in-ICT Programme in the Northern Region, has
toured three training centres in the Tamale Metropolis and Sagnarigu Municipality of the Northern Region.
The tour was to enable the Minister to witness and assess the training being held for the selected girls in basic ICT skills.
The training centres toured were Tamale Community Information Centre, Sagnarigu Community Information Centre, and Jisonayili Junior High School.
On July 17, this year, as part of the Girls-in-ICT Programme, the Ministry of Communications and Digitalisation started training 1,000 girls from all the 16 districts in the Northern Region on basic ICT skills, exposing them to coding, cyber security and website development.
To facilitate the exercise, a total of 100 teachers were trained as trainers to train beneficiary girls, who were divided into two batches with each batch undergoing the training for a period of five days.
Mrs Owusu-Ekuful, briefing journalists in Tamale after touring the training centres, said, “I have been very impressed with the quality of instruction that they have received from the facilitators and how they have also applied themselves with regard to the knowledge they have received. Some said they had never seen or touched a computer before. Now, they are creating their own games. They can create their own word documents and do other things with the computer.”
After the training, the girls will participate in a competition in ICT and a mentorship and climax session from July 31 to August 01, where the best 100 girls to emerge from the competition will be given awards (laptops and certificates).
After the climax, an Open Day experience would be held where the best 100 girls would be sent to Accra for a week to tour the offices of Mobile Network Operators, Companies in the ICT industry, selected Agencies of the Ministry of Communications and Digitalisation to interact, especially with women in the industry.
The Girls-In-ICT programme was introduced in 2012 by the International Telecommunications Union to create a global environment that empowers and encourages girls and young women to consider studies and careers in the growing field of ICTs.
Mrs Owusu-Ekuful told the beneficiary girls that the skills they were acquiring now would be relevant for them, no matter where they found themselves in life, adding, “The reason we are focusing on girls is to narrow the gender digital divide, fewer girls utilise or have computer skills or use them than boys do. So, we want to demystify it; introduce them to it and let them know that they can also do it.”
She said, “I am looking forward to Monday when we will have the mentorship day. We will bring female ICT professionals from various fields of endevour to talk to the girls about their own experiences and encourage them and let them see that the skills they are acquiring today, they can utilise them in the world of work tomorrow so that they can also consider choosing ICT careers instead of or in addition to more traditional careers that they are exposed to.”
Mrs Owusu-Ekuful visited two selected institutions, Dabokpa Technical Institute and Ghana Senior High School in Tamale, where as part of the e-transform project, working with the Ministry of Education, which selected the schools, were given 40-seater computer laboratories to enable more students get ICT instruction.
She said, “They are two out of 305 schools across the country that are being equipped with 40-seater ICT laboratories. The schools in the northern sector of the country will have their computers delivered within the next month or so. By the end of the year, the rest of the country will also get theirs as well, and that is exciting for me because it means many more students will have access to top notch digital skills.
Prior to touring the centres, Mrs Owusu-Ekuful paid a courtesy call on the Northern Regional Minister at his office in Tamale to brief him about the Girls-in-ICT Programme in the region.
GNA