The Vice President of the World Bank for Central and Western Africa, Ousmane Diagana, has said he is impressed with the status of the implementation of Ghana’s digitalization and innovations to improve the standards of the youth and the nation in general.
Mr. Ousmane Diagana, who is on a 3-day visit to Ghana visited the Accra Digital Centre, where the Ghana Tech Lab and Innovation Hub are located, to ascertain the status of implementation of the 2 projects.
“I am obviously pleased with the Ghana-World Bank partnership. The bank has been here since 2006 for the eGhana Project and we are committed to stay because job creation is certainly a challenge for all nations and with a project like this, we get the opportunity to address such,”he said.
‘‘Let me reiterate the bank’s willingness and commitment to continue partnering with the government of Ghana to make this project scalable and beneficial to many citizens. I am really pleased to see that Ghana is already in action with the eTransform project”. He added.
On her part, the Minister for Communications and Digitalisation, Mrs. Ursula Owusu Ekuful, noted the World Bank’s assistance had been remarkable and it was rewarding to find the seed sown in the Ghana tech lab and innovation hub had yielded some positive results.
She added that young people were the face of digitalization and investing in them now would lead to greater revenues in the next few years.
“I keep saying that if we give our young people the digital resources they require today, they will provide the human resources for the global world of work in 20-30 years and what we have seen today is just by a little exposure to digital technology, innovations, and skills” Mrs. Owusu-Ekuful stated.
‘‘I’m glad we have been able to do this with the support of the World Bank. The project has impacted about 5,000 young persons and several hundreds of jobs are being created. We will continue to do what we can with the assistance of other development partners and the private sector to scale up the project so we can reach even more young people across the country, “she added.
The Ghana Tech Lab and Innovation Hub are projects funded by the World Bank through the eTransform Project under the auspices of the Ministry of Communications and Digitalisation.