Drive Ghana’s digital revolution to transform your fortunes – Bawumia urges youth
Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia has tasked the youth to propel the Government’s digitalisation agenda to brighten their prospects in securing jobs and wealth creation.
He said the Ghanaian economy had undergone significant digital transformation over the past four years, with many technological innovations and e-commerce springing up in different sectors of the economy.
“Digitalisation is a youth-driven revolution, it is your revolution. And so we should move away from dependency mentality to “Can-do mind-set,” Dr Bawumia emphasised.
He was delivering a public lecture on the impact of the Government’s digitalisation initiatives at the Berekusu Campus of the Ashesi University, on Tuesday night.
Dr. Bawumia emphasised that digitalisation held huge prospects for the Ghanaian youth and urged them to embrace it to propel national development.
The lecture, with the hashtag “DigiTimeinGhana” was on the topic: “Using Digitalisation to Transform an Economy-The Ghana Story.”
It attracted students from the University of Ghana, Islamic University, Wisconsin University, the academia, media practitioners, Ministers of State and policy-makers.
It provided a platform to ask the Vice President questions on the digital economy.
“There is a growing body of empirical evidence that illustrates the capacity of digital technology to create jobs, significantly boost productivity, increase income and support wealth creation.”
“I am excited about the prospects of the nation we are building, the brilliant minds being nurtured who are contributing towards this vision and I look forward to all of you playing a role in making our nation great and strong,” Dr Bawumia stated.
The Vice President mentioned the progress the Government had made in the areas of unique identity cards (Ghana-Card), digital address system, mobile money interoperability, drone medical delivery system, e-passport, Ghana.gov portal, and many other government services.
More were being done with the youth in mind for them to be the driving force, he added.
“Having put together these large databases as a result of digitalisation, our focus would now turn, inter alia, to data analytics through big data, artificial intelligence, machine learning to provide solutions to many challenges we face,” he stated.
“We will leverage on the progress we have made with digitalisation to drive innovation for the youth.
“We are not yet where we want to be, but we have made a great start and there is a lot more to come. There is also more to be done to embed these major digital reforms in the everyday lives of Ghanaians as adoption and usage of digital technology increases.”
The Vice encouraged all citizens to commit to embracing the digital initiatives for maximum impact in the coming years.
He said it had taken the leadership and political will of the Akufo-Addo-led Government to put in place the digital infrastructure to drive economic development.
Source: GNA