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The Minister for Communication, Digital Technology and Innovations, Samuel Nartey George, has announced that the government is targeting the creation of 100,000 digitally enabled jobs within the next two years under its flagship One Million Coders Programme.
He said the initiative was shifting its focus from digital skills training to job creation, with plans to connect trained beneficiaries to businesses seeking workers with specialised digital skills.
Speaking during a monitoring visit to the Ashanti Region, Mr George explained that although the National Democratic Congress (NDC) manifesto pledged to train one million Ghanaians in digital skills, President John Dramani Mahama had directed the Ministry to ensure that participants also secure employment after completing their training.
He said the government had presented the President with progress reports and remained confident of training one million Ghanaians within the programme’s four-year implementation period.
According to the Minister, the government is now working to build a substantial pool of skilled digital workers to meet growing demand for digital services, particularly from international companies seeking to outsource work to Ghana.
“We have shown His Excellency the trajectory the programme is on; we will cross a million in the four years. We are pivoting now away from the training into the job creation, and I am confident our target is to reach 100,000 digitally,” he said.
Mr George further disclosed that the programme had already developed a pool of 10,000 data annotators who could be linked to businesses requiring workers for specific digital assignments.
The monitoring visit to the Ashanti Region formed part of efforts to assess the programme’s progress and evaluate its implementation across various training centres.
As part of the tour, the Minister visited training centres and artificial intelligence laboratories at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) before proceeding to other centres in Kwadaso, Asawase and Nkwantakese.
During the engagements, he interacted with programme beneficiaries, listened to their concerns and assured them that the issues raised would be addressed.