Revolutionizing Lives with DTC in Ghana

Revolutionizing Lives with DTC in Ghana

“This DTC training has been a game-changer for me. Despite not having formal education […] now I can confidently use my phone and market my services,” says Yea Acheampongmaa, a hairstylist from Ghana.

The successful implementation of the ‘Boosting Digital Skills through Digital Transformation Centres’ project delivered through the Ghana Investment Fund for Electronic Communications (GIFEC) – through the ITU Digital Transformation Centre Initiative – has transformed thousands of lives. Women entrepreneurs, for example, learned digital marketing abilities that allowed them to build their businesses online. School children were taught programming languages such as Scratch and Python, sparking an early interest in technology.

Nana Bobie Ansah II, Chief of Bonwire—a town known for its traditional Kente fabric in Ghana—said, “We learned how to use the Internet to access markets across the world.”

“The ITU programme has really impacted my academic work – typing on the computer, how to open a document, I can send a message to a friend and also learn on the computer, too,” said Angela Amoakoaa, a visually impaired student.

The ‘Boosting Digital Skills through Digital Transformation Centres (DTCs)’ project was launched by ITU in 2021 to enhance GIFEC’s training activities under the Digital Transformation Centres initiative, focusing on providing digital skills training to women entrepreneurs, youth, students, instructors, marginalized groups and persons with disabilities.

With financial support from ITU and the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad), the project exceeded its original targets:

Almost 20,000 citizens across Ghana were trained through this project, of which two-thirds are women.
220 community instructors were trained, who will continue to train citizens in the future. This will ensure continuity and sustainability of the programme.
450 persons with visual impairments were trained on basic digital skills in the final year of the project. It was the first training of this kind and the demand was bigger anticipated. This is a testament to the success of the training of this nature.
The project also supported the revamping of many local community centres, to fully equip them deliver training in the future.

“The DTC project has not only equipped thousands of Ghanaians with essential digital skills but it has also laid a strong foundation for future initiatives. It fostered a culture of continuous learning and digital innovation – this will ensure that the benefits of this project will be felt for years to come,” said Dr Cosmas Luckyson Zavazava, Director, ITU Telecommunication Development Bureau.

Watch the documentary to find out how the project has improved lives and fostered digital transformation in Ghana.

About the Digital Transformation Centres initiative

The Digital Transformation Centres (DTC) initiative was launched by ITU, in partnership with Cisco in 2019 to improve digital literacy and capacity in underserved communities. Today, 14 DTCs around the world are helping people to improve employability, entrepreneurship and overall digital inclusion by offering basic and intermediate digital skills training to citizens in their communities.

This is an ITU Development #DigitalImpactUnlocked story

About the project

Project number: 7GLO20108
Project title: Boosting digital skills through Digital Transformation Centres (DTCs)
Description: Despite unprecedented progress in technological development across the globe, the digital divide persists with almost half the population remaining offline and slowing growth rates in Internet uptake. Among those excluded from the digital world are populations living in rural and underserved communities, low-income households, women and girls and other marginalized groups. As access to digital services increases and the cost of access decreases, lack of digital skills is becoming one of the greatest barriers to digital inclusion, particularly for people at the bottom of the social pyramid in developing countries. In addition, the business sector (including SMEs and start-ups) often lacks employees with the necessary digital skills to become successful in an increasing digital economy. Despite the existence of several targeted digital education and skills policies and programmes, the skills gap remains persistent and is even growing in view of the growth of the technology sector and the demand for a digitally skilled workforce across all other sectors. It is against this background that ITU and Cisco launched the Digital Transformation Centres (DTC) Initiative in September 2019. The objective of the Initiative is to support countries develop digital skills mainly at basic and intermediate level and particularly in the underserved communities. The capacity to scale and to deliver digital skills training to a large number of citizens is a core objective of the Initiative.

Visit the project page for more details.