The government is targeting the creation of 100,000 digitally enabled jobs within the next two years under its flagship One Million Coders Programme, as it shifts its focus from digital skills training to employment opportunities.
Minister for Communication, Digital Technology and Innovations, Samuel Nartey George, said the new emphasis followed a directive from President John Dramani Mahama to ensure that beneficiaries of the programme could secure jobs after completing their training.
Speaking during a monitoring visit to the Ashanti Region, he explained that while the National Democratic Congress’ manifesto committed to training one million Ghanaians in digital skills over four years, the government was also working to connect trained participants to businesses that need digital expertise.
Mr George said the Ministry had presented the President with progress reports and remained confident of meeting the one-million training target within the administration’s four-year term.
He said Ghana was seeking to build a large pool of skilled digital workers to meet growing demand for digital services, particularly from international companies looking to outsource work to the country.
“We have shown His Excellency the trajectory the programme is on; we will cross a million in the four years. We are pivoting now away from the training into the job creation,” he said, expressing confidence in the employment target.
He disclosed that the programme had already developed a pool of 10,000 data annotators whose skills could be presented to businesses seeking workers for specific digital assignments.
The Minister’s visit to the Ashanti Region formed part of efforts to assess the programme’s progress and implementation at various training centres.
He toured training centres and artificial intelligence laboratories at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology before visiting other facilities at Kwadaso, Asawase and Nkwantakese.