Twelve girls have been awarded for their outstanding performance in the 2018 International Girls in ICT training programme.
With Nora Akoto Tamakloe, a student from the Santa Maria Junior High School in the Ashanti being pronounced the overall best student.
The students were presented with laptops, modems, pen drives, power banks and a certificate of participation.
The first three girls who came up top also won fully furnished computer laboratories for their schools..
The 2018 training programme was climaxed at a ceremony at the Great Hall of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi on the theme “expand horizons, change attitudes”.
The Sawiahene, Nana Kwaku Amankwah Sarkodie who represented the Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II at the event entreated government to give enough support to the programme by providing ICT infrastructure throughout the country.
He said, education is always complemented by technology hence the need to improve upon the status of technology in the country.
The Minister for Communications, Mrs Ursula Owusu-Ekuful underscored the need for the sustenance of the programme purposely to benefit more girls in the country and to end the gender stereotypes associated with ICT.
According to the Minister, over 3000 girls have benefitted from the training since its inception.
She was elated due to the tremendous enhancement of the programme with the introduction of coding and programming to enable the girls become more innovative.
The minister announced that the Ministry of Communications was in collaboration with the Ministry of Education to review the basic school curriculum to include coding as a subject.
She was of the view that it will provide children in basic schools great interest and will afford them the opportunity to be exposed to ICT at their early ages.
Report by: Stephanie Horsu
