By Rebecca Ekpe
The 75th Annual New Year School and Conference is taking place at the University of Ghana, under the theme ‘’Nurturing Resilience: Adopting Technology and Embracing Humanism for Sustainable Development’’. The three-day conference, organized by the School of Continuing and Distance Education, in collaboration with the Ministries of Communications and Digitalization, Finance and Education is providing a platform to engage partners in academia, media and civil society organizations in public and private sectors to deliberate on pertinent issues affecting national development and proffer workable solutions to them.
Providing a platform to proffer solutions that will shape public policies and promote good governance is the way to go as Vice President Dr. Bawumia during the opening of the New Year school reiterated that in this era of the fourth industrial revolution, digital technology is an enabler to enhance productivity and revenue mobilization for sustainable development. As Ghana gravitates toward creating a more digital friendly ecosystem, it is critical to point out the need to make connection to the internet more accessible by making it affordable. Which means the ability to purchase data to stay connected and remain connected should be a priority. Available data reveals that a lot more young people are online, unlike older people.
Clearly, there is a digital divide, that also ought to be overcome if Ghana will be able to leap frog into using technology to propel the economy as being envisaged. It is however commendable that the University of Ghana has plans to construct a Digital Youth Village to promote and boost digital entrepreneurship among the Ghanaian youth. The Village, being constructed by the University of Ghana on a five-acre land, is expected to serve as a center of excellence for learning, innovation, and creativity, with state-of-the-art information and technologies. According to Vice President Bawumia, the Digital Youth Village would harness the potential of the Ghanaian youth in information communication technology (ICT) for accelerated socio-economic development.
This is laudable come to think of the fact that allocations have been made in the 2024 Budget to have Phaser one of the projects completed by the close of 2024. However well-intentioned this project may be, if it is not implemented according to plan and made to serve its intended purpose, it may end up like a white elephant and perhaps worsen the plight of the teeming youth in Ghana whose ambitions and aspirations lie in a digitally activated ecosystem that will create jobs and propel the country’s economy to deter them from escaping their homeland in search of perhaps non-existent and ironically better circumstances.
Once again to ensure that Ghana is able to nurture resilience by adopting technology and embracing humanism for Sustainable Development, there is a need to draw synergies between academia and industry. Foreign content must give way to Ghanaian content and above all the politicization of issues must give way to inclusivity and popular representation, because that would perhaps be the only way the New Year School would not only be an annual affair but in reality, give real time answers and proffers solutions to Ghana’s developmental deficits.
