Ghanaian Youth Have Embraced The Digital Revolution- Omane Boamah

The Minister for Communications, Dr Edward Kofi Omane Boamah has noted that the digital revolution has created a paradigm shift in the expectations of the youth of today and they now expect to be trained in ICT to make them eligible for employment and entrepreneurship.
“The paradigm shift is also in respect of the declining role of engineering and technology in communications management in favour of sound business applications that involve the management of software to deliver services at lower costs for the satisfaction of consumers whose income provide for the profit and sustainability of the communication companies,” he reiterated.
He has consequently, challenged the authorities the University of Ghana Business School(UGBS) to consider introducing Specialised ICT Management Programmes to produce a new generation of managers to lead the Telecommunications/ICT industry.
Dr Omane Boamah said this when he delivered the keynote address at the UGBS 35th Annual Management Day held on Wednesday, April 30,2014 at the school premises in Legon, Accra. The event was themed: ‘Harnessing The Digital Economy For National Development.’
According to him the rapid growth of the digital economy, which is an economy based on electronic commerce, has presented huge opportunities for economic and social development, creating global markets for digital applications and services, improving productive capacity, reducing the cost of doing business and unleashing creativity and innovation and it is therefore incumbent on Ghana as a nation to effectively harness its forces for national development.
“Also the linkages assure me that tertiary education is being positioned to train the needed manpower for the job market which experts have estimated will offer two million more ICT jobs than professionals available to fill them in the coming decade,” he emphasized.
He said government in that light has already put up 93 fully furnished and equipped community information centres across the country to provide community internet access and offer low cost ICT training to the residents in the respective communities including basic school children while serving also as a community information resource centres.
“Teachers, doctors, nurses, civil servants among others working in these towns can engage in long distance education via the power of uninterrupted internet service with adequate bandwidth capacity to prepare them take advantage of the digital economy,” he averred.
He noted that in order to establish a robust, available and affordable telecommunications and allied networks and services that are well interconnected to provide local and international gateway, the Ministry of Communications has designed an Action Plan to guide the sustainable implementation of the Enabling Physical Infrastructure for ICT.
The Minister paid a glowing tribute to successive government for their commitment to pursuing an ICT-enabled vision aimed at improving the quality of life of the Ghanaian citizenry.
Earlier in a welcome address, the Vice-Chancellor Professor Ernest Aryeetey intimated that the Management Day discussions are expected to stimulate further discourse between academia and practice with the hope that the outcome will shape teaching, learning and research in the school as well as influence policies and strategies in industry and governance so as to support the socio-economic development of the country.
He said the planning of the management day celebration rotates from department to department and this year’s celebration happens to be the turn of the Department of Operations and Management Information Systems(OMIS), which specializes in the teaching and research of organizational process optimization and technology innovation in industry, governance and society at large.
The Vice Chancellor was optimistic that the event will stimulate fruitful discussions on how Ghana can benefit from the global digital revolution to promote its socio-economic development.