Thirty-seven junior high school (JHS) girls from selected basic schools in the Tema Metropolis have benefited from the nationwide ‘Girls in ICT Initiative training.
The training is an initiative by the Ministry of Communication and Digitalization aimed at giving girls and young women nationwide the opportunity to get first-hand experience and exposure to information, communication, and technology (ICT).
The 37 were part of 1000 selected girls nationwide to participate in the programme organised by the ministry in collaboration with the Ghana Investment Fund for Electronic Communication (GIFEC), the Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT (KACE), the Greater Accra Regional Coordinating Council, and the Ghana Education Service (GES).
The training programme, which took place at Community 8 No. 2 JHS and Manhean TMA 1 JHS, saw participants receiving basic computer skills, the fundamentals of the programme, an introduction to scratch coding to create games and animations, social media, and internet safety.
Mrs. Bernice Ofori, the Tema Metro Director of Education, opening the training session stated that girls stereotyping in some Ghanaian families, in which girls are given baby dolls to play with while boys are given technological tools such as toy cars and bicycles to play with, narrows the girl child’s mind to only the reproductive role of females.
Mrs. Ofori added that this tunes the girls’ minds to raising families and deprives them of the opportunity to be exposed to the technological environment.
She encouraged girls to disabuse their minds of gender stereotyping and embrace the new era of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM).
She urged them to pursue STEM courses at a higher level to enable them to choose careers in such fields as they can excel in those sectors.
Ms. Cherub Kwarteng, the Deputy Director of the Tema Metropolitan Assembly (TMA), who represented the Metropolitan Chief Executive, encouraged the girls to appreciate the opportunity to study the ICT programme, which will prepare them to fit into the artificial intelligence (AI) environment.
Mr. Abu Mohammed, the Northern Regional Manager of GIFEC, with the additional duty of monitoring the programme at Ashaiman, Tema Metro, and Tema West, motivated the girls to take the training seriously to enable them to win awards and cut a path in the field for themselves.
At the end of the training, four girls and one female teacher who excelled in the initiative received one laptop each from the Ministry of Communications and Digitalization.
