The National Youth Authority (NYA) in partnership with the Mobile Telecommunications Network (MTN Ghana), has supported the training of 40 youth in the Upper East Region in skills training development modules.
The beneficiaries, who were from all the 15 municipal and the district assemblies in the Upper East Region, received employable skills training in online digital marketing, make-ups and hair dressing and beads making.
They were also provided with start-up kits.
Speaking at the graduation ceremony in Bolgatanga on Monday, the Deputy Chief Executive Officer (DCEO) of NYA, Mr Bright Acheampong, observed that skills development and apprenticeship was the key to youth employment.
He stated that the employment dynamics have changed, and it was against this background that all over the world, the focus has been driven towards youth skills development and entrepreneurship.
The DCEO noted that the public sector in Ghana can only employ 600,000 people out of the nation’s total population of 30 million.
It was for this reason that government has placed much emphasis on skills development and entrepreneurship, targeting the youth.
Mr Acheampong stated that many of the youth who received skills training modules from the NYA and its partners in the past, were excelling and have also engaged others.
He cited one of the beneficiaries at the Soe community in the Bolgatanga municipality who had been able to sell shea butter because of the training he received in digital marketing module.
“Through this, he has also been able to empower many women groups in the region to go into shea butter processing to meet the demands of the national and international market,” he stressed.
He said the NYA would be rolling out more skills development training modules to empower more youth with employable skills and called on the unemployed to avail themselves for the offer.
The Director of Programmes and Operations, Mr Mumuni Sulemana appealed to the graduands to work hard and become ambassadors of the programme, so as to attract more funding and technical support from government and its development partners to widen the scope of the training.
The Upper East Regional Manager of MTN Ghana, Mr Richard Asamani, noted that MTN Ghana has set aside some days in June every year to undertake voluntary services.
Miss Ghana 2017, Margaret Dery, said she was making it in life through the production of soap and cream from shea butter.
She called on them to rebrand their products and to also use the digital market platforms to market their products.
FROM SAMUEL AKAPULE, BOLGATANGA
