Govt commits to narrowing digital divide – Ursula Owusu
The Government has expressed its commitment to continue implementing measures to narrow the gender digital divide in the country.
“We want to ensure that no one is left out in this era of digitalisation that is why we have programmes specially designed to ensure young girls take up courses in ICT and making access to tools and internet easy through a gradual process,” the Minister of Communication and Digitalisation (MoCD), Mrs Ursula Owusu Ekuful, has stated.
Speaking during a panel discussion on the second day of the 75th Annual New Year School yesterday, she noted that her outfit had institutionalised the Girls in ICT initiative, expanded it and included mentorship sessions where accomplished female ICT professionals interact with and encourage the girls to take up courses in ICT.
These young girls she said also get to spend some time in Accra to experience women in technology at their work places “we have already begun seeing early signs of success.”
Touching on the “Smart Community Project,” which was designed to provide affordable and free wifi internet services to unserved and underserved communities across the country, Mrs Ekuful stated that the initiative was already being implemented as well as the Rural Telephony Project to extend the coverage of mobile telephone and data services into all areas of the country by the end of the year.
She said with all the digital initiatives of the government, more efforts must be made to secure the digital ecosystem as well as prioritising cyber security, adding that Ghana was one of the only three African countries which had ratified both the Budapest convention on cybercrime and electronic evidence and the African Union (AU) convention on cybesecurity and personal data protection.
The passage of the Cybersecurity Act, the minister said, demonstrated the government’s commitment to the protection of both infrastructure and transactions.
“Our commitment to fostering an enabling environment for digital growth has been unwavering. Our legal and regulatory framework, coupled with significant investments in connectivity, data centers, digital payment systems and cybersecurity infrastructure, has laid a solid foundation for a thriving digital ecosystem and ensuring resilience through the use of digital technologies while at the same time meeting Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),” she added.
On his part Minister of Education, Yaw Osei Adutwum, reiterated the government’s focus on building well-equipped smart schools to make the pupils computer literate.
He said many schools across the country had already been well-equipped with modern computer laboratories, some of which had already begun holding coding classes.
BY RAISSA SAMBOU
