Build capacities of children in ICT, parents urged

By Regina Benneh 

Abesewa (Ash), Dec. 22, GNA - Alhaji Yahaya Zakaria Usman, the Director of Operations of the Ghana Industrial Fund for Electronic Communication (GIFEC) has appealed to parents to encourage their children to build their capacities in ICT to fit into the digital society. 

He made the call at a ceremony to climax a 10-day ICT capacity building and skills training programme under the Ministry of Communication for managers and teachers of GIFEC community ICT Centre at Abesewa in the Ahafo-Ano South-East District of Ashanti Region. 

The Digital Transformation Centres (DTCs) project is in partnership with the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), Cisco and the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD). 

Mr Usman said the training of trainers programme aimed at identifying and training of Master Trainers and Instructors certified by Cisco who would support training delivery at the community level and aimed at increasing a digitally literate citizenry to boost their ICT capabilities to enable them to participate more meaningfully in the knowledge society. 

He said the participants were trained in Cisco certificate courses such as entrepreneurship, introduction to python, digital marketing, python programming, introduction to cyber security and were awarded with applicable certificates. 

Mr Usman added GIFEC was ready to install devices at available centres so that the youth, particularly women would be trained to become ambassadors at the rural level to be able to impact others on ICT knowledge and periodically monitor their progress. 

He expressed concern about the gender inequality among the trainees and urged all to develop interest in the ICT programme, adding that illiterates, market women, school children and the entire population could be trained to become beneficiaries of the programme. 

Later in an interview, a participant, Mr. Derick Fio said the programme was very useful and had updated their knowledge in ICT and expressed the desire to train other people in their communities to contribute in “fighting” cybercrime in the country. 

GNA