Digital skills will be required in entrepreneurship – Ursula

Minister for Communications and Digitalisation, Ursula Owusu Ekuful has hinted that the country is moving towards a direction where digital skills will be required in all forms of entrepreneurship and vocational fields.

According to her, the use of ICT tools will be made available to students at all levels in order to prepare them for the anticipated future.

She therefore assured participants that government will ensure that more rural areas are connected to any form of ICT through the support of the Ghana Investment Fund for Electronic Communication, GIFEC.

“ICT will be needed in all fields of work that we are doing as a people, the world is moving at a much faster rate that even if you want to be mechanic, you will need ICT and digital education.
ICT will push us in whatever work we want to do after school so let’s take the ICT training very serious from here.

“Government will do its best to equip you and make available ICT centres in most parts of the country so that we can all benefit from the internet revolution” she said.

Ursula Owusu-Ekuful was speaking at the Mentorship Day for students in the Bono East Region that are participating in this year’s “Girls in ICT initiative”.

The Girls in ICT is an Initiative by the International Telecommunication Union, ITU and enhanced by the Ministry of Communications and Digitalisation.

It’s aimed at enhancing girls’ skills in the field of Information Communication and Technology.

The mentorship day event is part of initiatives by the Ministry to expose the girls to women mentors in the ICT industry.

Under the theme, Access and Safety, this year’s event is expected to train about five thousand girls from basic and second cycle institutions in the five regions that have been selected this year; these are Bono East, Bono, Ahafo, Savanna and Northern Regions.

It is also aimed at bringing together women in the industry to mentor girls in the selected regions.

This year’s mentors from Academia, Health, and Business used the occasion to encourage the girls to take advantage of the programme to further their education in Computer Science and other ICT education.

Dr. Mercy Badu who is a lecturer at the Department of Chemistry, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology used the platform to sell the idea of science and technology to the girls.

She advised them to take their education serious and focus on the goal of becoming career champions in their various fields in Technology since the world is moving towards that direction.

“Be a strong person in whatever you want to do in science because it is one of the fields that helps in solving problems in society; work hard towards it and you can achieve whatever dream you have in ICT” she advised.

Minister for Communications and Digitalisation, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful also made a passionate appeal to the teacher’s to support their wards in the chosen career of ICT.

The programme for the Bono East Region will climax on Wednesday, 21st April with a grand durbar after which the team will move to the four remaining selected regions.