Bringing more women into ICT – Expert

Bringing more women into Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is the most serious challenge facing ICT institutions in Ghana.

Ms Dorothy Gordon, Director-General of the Advanced Information and Technology Institute – Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence (AITI-KACE) said women need to be motivated to enable them take up ICT training at all levels.

Citing Kwegyir Aggrey, “If you educate a man, you educate an individual, but if you educate a woman, you educate the whole nation,” she said the girl child needs the support of all and sundry in order to excel.

“We want people to understand that the information technologies underlines every sector, so which ever profession you are going to go into, you are going to be dependable on them,” Ms Gordon stated on Wednesday in an interview with the Ghana News Agency in Accra.

“Understand also that your children's jobs are going to be ICT related, so give them enough exposure to these technologies so that they can understand and build on.”

She said AITI-KACE would through public private partnership construct an ultra-modern building to help run some of the distance programmes throughout Ghana.

The Director-General said over the past decade of the Centre’s creation, quality training in ICT had been given to a large number of Ghanaians, declaring that overall, Ghana is doing well in terms of ICT training.

“We do believe from the feedback we get from our students that we are one of the best in Ghana when it comes to ICT training.

“We are hoping that by the fact that there is a centre of excellence like this in Ghana, we have been able to encourage more Ghanaians to achieve more when it comes to technology.”

She said the Centre’s month long innovation celebration; which starts from October 28 to November 22, 2014 on the theme “Innovation for Jobs, Productivity and Growth” would showcase the achievements of the Centre over the past decade.

She said a number of ICT workshops in areas such as tele-medicine would be organized for the public within the period to give them more exposure.

Ms Gordon said the National Communication Authority would also be hosting a whole series of workshops to sensitize the public on the Authorities activities.

Other organizations who would be involved in the celebrations are Ghana Investment Fund for Electronic Communication (GIFEC) and the Ghana Community Network Services Limited.

The Director-General said their partners with their major vendors such as IBM, and Erikson would be part taking in the innovation month, to afford Ghanaians the opportunity to see trends in the ICT industry.

She said the month long event would give workers the opportunity to attend some sessions of the ICT programmes.

She said the Centre’s faculty was made up entirely of competent Ghanaians who had being trained in India, Europe and the United States.

She said as the Centre moves into the future they had done a lot of training online content production, which would help students to pursue distance courses online using the communities’ information centres that GIFEC had established in the regions.

The Director-General said the Centre’s vision is to become a globally renowned centre of excellence in information technology.