A total of 112 young women drawn from across the country have undergone Information Communication Technology (ICT) skills training under the Young African Works (YAW) programme.
The YAW, funded by Mastercard Foundation, is meant to provide 30 million youth with employable skills by 2030.
The free two-months training conducted by the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission (GAEC) under the auspices of CAMFED was on the theme “Women in Information Technology for Sustainable Development.”
The beneficiaries were trained in photography, graphic design, networking, hardware, website development, data management and programming.
As part of the training, the participants were given start-up support to help them to establish their own businesses
Those who did photography and graphic design were each given a brand new camera and those who pursued the other programmes were each given a laptop.
The Deputy Director-General of the Commission for Technical Vocational Education Training (CTVET),, Mr Peter AntwiBoasiako,speaking at the graduation ceremony held at GAEC on Saturday said TVET education was crucial to addressing the growing unemployment problem facing the country, stressing that the United Nations and the World Bank had affirmed that in their various reports.
He said private business operators and industry needed workforce with TVET and competency-based skills.
Mr Boasiako said in view of this, the government for the past six years, had invested more than GH¢11 billion to establish new TVET centres across the country and equip the technical universities with modern technical laboratories, equipment and tools.
The Deputy Director-General of CTVET urged the graduands to be exceptional and put what they had learnt into practice.
The Deputy Director-General of the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission (GAEC), Professor Dickson Adomako, said GAEC had established a Technology Transfer and Marketing Centre for capacity building, especially for TVET for the youth.
To this end, GAEC partnered CAMFED in 2019 to commence the TVET programme to equip the youth with technical skills to help build their capacities to establish their own businesses.
“The project adopts the market-driven approach to science and technology at GAEC through competency-based training of the informal sector for skills development, self-employment, and industry uptake,” Prof. Adomako stated.
He entreated the beneficiaries to put what they had learnt into practice and be an ambassador for the programme and tell others about it for them to enrol into the programme.
He commended Mastercard Foundation and CAMFED for funding the programme and appealed to other corporate and international organisations to support the programme for it to be sustained.
BY KINGSLEY ASARE
