Smart Africa Alliance and Ghana’s Ministry of Communications and Digitalisation have signed a memorandum of understanding for the establishment of a national digital academy in the West African country.

Smart Africa’s capacity building arm, Smart Africa Digital Academy (SADA), was launched in Ghana following the deployment of digital academies in the Republic of Congo in February and in Rwanda in March to support the uniquely identified digital skills priority needs at national level.

As a pan-African dynamic learning ecosystem, SADA aims to improve digital skills qualifications and employability and meet the emerging talent needs of African citizens, with national digital academies also set to be rolled out in Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Tunisia, Kenya and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

“Ghana is one of the most active countries of the Smart Africa Alliance and has been instrumental in advancing the digital skills of its citizens. We are pleased to contribute positively to the nation’s capacity building through the launch of SADA in Ghana,” says Smart Africa CEO and director-general Lacina Koné.

Smart Africa and Ghana’s Ministry of Communications and Digitalisation will continue to collaborate with key stakeholders to successfully execute the defined priority initiatives under the SADA Ghana framework.

These initiatives, which include executive education in specialised topics, as well as the training of teachers and the training of trainers in advanced computing, will be implemented in collaboration with development and private partners, such as the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit, the World Bank, the International Telecommunication Union, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and the Alliance for Affordable Internet, besides others.

“At the heart of the digital transformation lies the need to bridge the digital skills gap of our continent’s future and present workforce,” he adds.

Communications and Digitalisation Minister Ursula Owusu-Ekuful welcomed the launch, noting that it was a proud moment for the people of Ghana and Africa at large in the area of digital skills and empowering African citizens to take advantage of the digital transformation.

In April, SADA implemented a ‘federated cloud proof of value workshop’ in Accra where over 100 people from the public and private sectors were trained, with the aim of strengthening the country’s data centres and cloud cervices ecosystem with the collaboration of private-sector partners HPE and Intel.

In May, SADA held two other peer learning workshops on digital payments and artificial intelligence (AI), during which more than 60 experts gathered to gain knowledge and exchange best practices on digital payment ecosystems and develop AI frameworks in Ghana.

Since it started operations in August 2020, SADA, focusing on the capacity building for decision-makers module, has trained over 2 000 policy- and decision-makers across 26 countries in trending digital transformation topics, including AI use cases, fifth- generation connectivity, data protection and privacy, rural broadband policies, security technologies, regulatory and innovative sandboxing environments, data centres and the cloud, digital identity for underserved and ePayments, besides others.

The aim is to reach over 22 000 trained beneficiaries by 2023, supported by the SADA in-country implementation wave.

Smart Africa, launched in 2013, is an alliance of 32 African countries, international organisations and global private-sector players tasked with Africa’s digital agenda and empowered by commitments from African heads of State to accelerate sustainable socioeconomic development on the continent and usher Africa into the knowledge economy through affordable access to broadband and the use of information and communication technology.