Government Targets 100,000 Digital Jobs Under One Million Coders Programme — Sam George

The Minister for Communication, Digital Technology and Innovations, Samuel Nartey George, says government is targeting the creation of 100,000 digitally enabled jobs within the next two years under the One Million Coders Programme.

According to him, the initiative goes beyond equipping young people with coding and digital skills to ensuring they secure jobs by connecting trained beneficiaries to businesses in need of skilled digital workers.

Speaking during a monitoring visit to the Ashanti Region, Mr. George explained that while the initial commitment in the NDC's manifesto was to train one million Ghanaians in digital skills, President John Dramani Mahama has directed the Ministry to ensure that trainees also gain employment after their training.

"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 stated.

He disclosed that government has already built a pool of 10,000 data annotators whose skills can be marketed to local and international companies seeking to outsource digital assignments to Ghana, noting growing demand from international firms.

The Minister's visit to the Ashanti Region was to assess progress of the programme at various training centres. He toured artificial intelligence laboratories at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) and centres at Kwadaso, Asawase and Nkwantakese, where he interacted with beneficiaries and assured them their concerns would be addressed.