Africa ICT Right based in Accra with the aim of bridging the digital and technology gap between people living in the cities and urban areas and their rural folks, has called for the need to implement strong policies and initiatives as the machinery to fuel ICT education in Ghana.

According to Mr. Daniel Kwaku Ganyoame, Executive Director, Africa ICT Right, it is high time government placed premium on ICT education in Ghana to boost that sector. Coming from an ICT background, Mr. Ganyoame observed that both previous and current governments have all made efforts to make ICT education a force to reckon with but a lot more needed to be done to ensure that everyone gets the opportunity to become computer literate in order to curb the growing rate of computer illiteracy.

Mr. Ganyoame was speaking in an exclusive interview with ModernGhana when the news team caught up with him last week.

“I think a lot more must be done to enhance ICT education because the advanced countries we always admire keep developing through technology. I also think that there are policies that need to be changed to make ICT education a basic ingredient for development to fuel growth in all sectors of the economy,” the ICT expert revealed.

He further explained that a critical look at ICT education in the Ghanaian schools’ curriculum has shown that it has been restricted to only Microsoft software programmes which more often than not are very expensive and limit ICT studies.

“Most schools also do not have the resources to purchase Microsoft; what we therefore recommend for government now is what we call the Open Source. Now we are in a global village where everyone is talking about Open Source. The Open Source is a system where everybody easily gets access to free softwares produced within the country. This can go a long way to help government cut down the cost of purchasing Microsoft and other international softwares that are equally expensive to purchase for schools. So this is one area that we have to carefully look into,” Mr. Ganyoame recommended.

Touching on the role of ICT teachers, he indicated that teachers who are trained at the Teacher Training Colleges to take up ICT classes in schools should be well trained with the very best of ICT resources and materials such that the teachers can teach intensively when they come out. “When this is done, the ICT teachers would become well vexed with the subject and in turn pass it on to the students for them to learn the subject very well,” the Africa ICT Right, Executive Director emphasized.

About Africa ICT Right
Africa ICT Right is a non-profit ICT organization which was founded in 2007 and the main aim of the organization is to bridge the digital and technology gap between people living in the cities and urban areas and their rural folks. By so doing, the organization provides humanitarian ICT services to help schools in the rural areas to also become technologically inclined to match their counterparts within the cities.

Africa ICT Right does this by donating computers, building computer laboratories for schools and providing free intensive ICT capacity building courses for teachers in rural areas. It also organizes ICT workshops for teachers and hold inter-schools ICT competitions for both junior high and senior high schools.

Just like any non-profit organization, the major challenge has been the lack of support to fund these humanitarian projects it undertakes but the organization has been able to manage the little that comes and that in itself is laudable. Usually when an organization is small, it becomes very difficult to solicit support for projects but it has lived up to the billing and has been able to stand right in spite of the challenges.

Africa ICT Right is basically doing a lot to spread ICT education wider in the villages and the aim is to bridge the dichotomy technology has created between rural and urban dwellers. Those in the urban areas are privileged to experience technology since they are exposed to it each and every day but when you go to the villages, the case is totally the reverse.