The Minister for Communication, Digital Technology and Innovations, Samuel Nartey George Esq , has begun a tour of the Ashanti Region to assess the implementation and impact of the government’s digitalisation projects, insisting that direct engagement with beneficiaries is necessary to ensure value for money.
The Minister said the nationwide monitoring exercise would enable the government to identify gaps in the implementation of its digital initiatives, improve service delivery and determine whether the interventions were achieving their intended objectives.
He explained that although agencies under his Ministry had submitted reports on their activities, it was important for him and his team to interact directly with beneficiaries to establish the actual situation on the ground.
Mr. George, who disclosed this on the first day of his Ashanti Regional tour, said the exercise formed part of efforts to strengthen accountability and improve the delivery of digital services under President John Dramani Mahama’s Reset Agenda.
“We started a tour of the country. We started in the Greater Accra Region, we did a few locations there, then we went to the Eastern Region. This week, we are here in the Ashanti Region, and later in the week, we will be in the Volta Region,” he said.
According to him, the tour would provide the Ministry with first-hand information on the performance of its programmes and enable officials to make the necessary adjustments based on the experiences of people directly benefiting from them.
DIRECT FEEDBACK
The Minister said the monitoring exercise was necessary to complete the communication cycle by ensuring that feedback from beneficiaries informed government decisions.
He observed that while reports from field officers remained important, direct engagement with beneficiaries could reveal challenges that might not be captured in official documents.
“It’s part of our monitoring work to ascertain for ourselves the status of the work that our agencies have done. It’s been almost 20 months in office, we’re putting a lot of projects and programmes in place and it’s important that despite the reports that come to us and the trust we have in our people, we come to meet the beneficiaries,” he stated.
Mr. George recalled a comment by the Chief of Nkawie on the importance of feedback, explaining that effective communication required not only the transmission of information but also a response from the people receiving it.
He said the Ministry was interested in identifying what was working, the challenges confronting beneficiaries and the changes needed to make the programmes more effective.
The Minister disclosed that interactions with participants in the One Million Coders Programme had already brought to light some issues requiring adjustments to the programme’s implementation.
He said such challenges might have remained undetected if officials had relied exclusively on reports submitted by field officers.
“Basically, this is to allow us to get first-hand knowledge from the beneficiaries of the projects we’re doing. That’s the benefit of this — it helps us to evolve and adapt in the delivery of our projects,” he added.
NETWORK EXPANSION
Mr. George also used the tour to assess the implementation of policies and projects intended to improve telecommunications services across the country.
He explained that some government interventions required time to produce their full impact, particularly those involving infrastructure expansion and the extension of network coverage to underserved communities.
According to him, the Ministry was monitoring ongoing network expansion projects involving MTN Ghana and Telecel Ghana, with approximately 800 new sites being rolled out under MTN and about 1,960 sites under Telecel.
He said while some of the sites had been completed, others were still under construction, with additional facilities being commissioned as the projects progressed.
The Minister stressed that the government needed to monitor the projects continuously to establish whether the expansion was translating into improved connectivity and better telecommunications services for users.
He disclosed that he had been testing the quality of network services on his mobile phone while travelling through various communities to assess the ease of making calls and accessing the internet.
“I’ve been on my phone, trying to see how easy it is to make calls as we go into various communities, how easy it is to browse. And I’m taking note of that and sending reports back to the various technical teams at the NCA and with the GIFEC team on the ground,” he said.
The observations, he explained, would be communicated to the relevant technical teams, including the National Communications Authority (NCA) and the Ghana Investment Fund for Electronic Communications (GIFEC), for the necessary action.
Mr. George said the monitoring process would continue over the next two years to help the Ministry assess progress, address implementation challenges and improve the delivery of its programmes.
ONE MILLION CODERS
The Minister further announced plans to broaden participation in the flagship One Million Coders Programme, with a stronger focus on students in universities and technical and vocational education and training (TVET) institutions.
He said the Ministry was intensifying public education and publicity through traditional and social media to increase awareness of the programme and attract more participants.
However, he indicated that the strategy for reaching the programme’s target was being expanded beyond community-based ICT centres to include learners in tertiary and technical institutions.
Mr. George said the shift was intended to create additional entry points for young people seeking digital skills while ensuring that the government achieved its target of training one million Ghanaians.
He cited the programme’s expansion at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), where the number of laptops deployed had been increased from 500 to 2,500.
He explained that the Ministry was also broadening its focus beyond first-year students to include final-year students who were preparing to enter the job market.
“We started at KNUST. You saw that we decided to expand our footprint in KNUST from 500 laptops to 2,500 laptops. And we’re moving away from just first years to looking at final years, because we want to begin to look at preparing people who are about to graduate for the world of work,” he said.
According to the Minister, the emphasis on final-year students was intended to equip young people with relevant digital competencies before graduation, thereby improving their readiness for employment opportunities in an increasingly technology-driven economy.
He clarified, however, that the decision to expand the programme into universities and other institutions did not mean that existing community-based ICT centres would be closed.
Rather, he said, the Ministry was opening up additional avenues for participation to reach a wider pool of learners.
“So you’d realise that the programme is pivoting away from just the community-led centres. We’re not going to shut down the community-led centres. They’re going to remain. But then we are opening up new streams of learners. And so as we do the new stream of learners and then we increase publicity, we expect to hit our one million mark very easily,” he stressed.
IDLE LAPTOPS TO SCHOOLS
The Minister also defended the decision to repurpose some laptops deployed to community ICT centres where the available devices were not being fully utilised.
He explained that GIFEC, which supports the establishment of ICT laboratories in schools and communities, was reviewing the deployment of equipment to ensure that government resources were used efficiently.
Mr. George said the government had prioritised the One Million Coders Programme during the past 20 months and that the utilisation of equipment at some centres needed to be assessed against actual patronage.
He argued that leaving laptops idle in centres with low attendance would not serve the interests of the communities when nearby schools lacked the necessary equipment for ICT education.
According to him, the Ministry’s approach was to redistribute underutilised devices to schools within the same communities so that more students could benefit from them.
“Instead of having devices sit there idle, we would rather repurpose them for a cluster of schools in that community. Bear this in mind — we are not taking the laptops away from the community. We’re only repurposing them,” he emphasised.
To illustrate the rationale, Mr. George cited a hypothetical situation in which a community ICT centre had 50 laptops but recorded an average daily attendance of 30 users.
In such a situation, he said, the remaining 20 laptops could be deployed to a nearby senior high school or junior high school that did not have an ICT laboratory.
He maintained that such a move would not deprive the community of the equipment but would extend access to digital learning resources to other students in the same area.
“So if there’s a senior high school in the community that doesn’t have an ICT lab and you put in 20 laptops there, you set it up — it still benefits that community,” he said.
The Minister added that many senior high school students were aged 15 and above and possessed Ghana Cards, making it possible for eligible students to be enrolled on the One Million Coders platform.
He said the broader objective was to ensure that laptops and other digital learning resources were deployed where they could have the greatest impact.
JOBS AFTER TRAINING
Beyond the target of training one million Ghanaians, Mr. George disclosed that the Ministry was now working to address the employment prospects of participants after completing their training.
He said the original NDC manifesto commitment was to train one million Ghanaians under the One Million Coders Programme, and reports presented to President Mahama indicated that the programme was on course to exceed the target within four years.
However, he noted that the President had challenged the Ministry to look beyond the number of people trained and focus on how the acquired skills could translate into jobs and economic opportunities for young people.
“We’ve shown reports to His Excellency the President, and we’ve shown him the trajectory the programme is on. We will cross a million in the four years. But President Mahama’s next question to the Ministry is what happens after the training, which means find jobs,” he revealed.
The Minister said the directive had prompted the Ministry to explore ways of creating a critical mass of digitally skilled young people who could be connected to employment opportunities in the digital economy.
The move, he explained, would help ensure that the programme delivered benefits beyond classroom instruction and digital skills acquisition.
He indicated that the next phase would focus on the link between training and employment, with the ultimate objective of equipping young people with relevant competencies and improving their access to opportunities in the technology sector.
The initiative forms part of the government’s broader ambition to use digitalisation as a tool for job creation, skills development and economic transformation.
RESET AGENDA.
The Ashanti Regional tour forms part of the Ministry’s nationwide effort to evaluate the implementation of its digitalisation programmes, assess the performance of agencies under its supervision and identify areas requiring improvement.
The exercise is also expected to provide officials with a clearer understanding of the challenges confronting beneficiaries and the extent to which government interventions are improving access to digital services.
Mr. George said the findings from the visits would inform decisions on how existing programmes could be adjusted to achieve better results.
With network expansion, digital skills training and the deployment of ICT equipment among the areas under review, the Minister maintained that direct engagement with beneficiaries was essential to ensuring that government policies produced the intended outcomes.
He said the ultimate objective was to improve programme delivery, expand digital access and position more Ghanaians to benefit from opportunities in the digital economy in line with President Mahama’s Reset Agenda.
