Smart Africa’s capacity building arm, the Smart Africa Digital Academy (SADA) in partnership with Ghana’s Ministry of communications and digitalisation have launched a national digital academy in the country, marking the official kick-off of in-country implementation of the initiative
The agreement is contained within a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed recently between the Smart Africa Alliance and Ghana’s Ministry of communications and digitalisation. The launch in Ghana follows the rollout of the national digital academies of SADA that took place in the Republic of Congo in February and in Rwanda in March earlier this year.
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. The national digital academy will support the uniquely identified digital skills priority needs at the national level. Furthermore, SADA said that such national digital academies will soon be rolled out in Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Tunisia, Kenya and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Prior to the official launch, SADA implemented a federated cloud proof of value workshop in Accra in April where over 100 people from the public and private sectors were trained. The workshop aimed to strengthen the countries’ data centres and cloud services ecosystem with the collaboration of our private sector partners, HPE and Intel.
Additionally, SADA held two other peer-learning workshops; one on digital payments and the other on Artificial Intelligence (AI), during which more than 60 experts gathered to gain knowledge and exchange best practices on the digital payment ecosystem, and in developing AI Frameworks in Ghana.
As part of the next steps, Smart Africa and the Ministry of communications and digitalisation will continue to collaborate with the key stakeholders to successfully execute the defined priority initiatives under the SADA Ghana framework. These initiatives range from executive education in specialised topics to training of teachers and training trainers in advanced computing. The initiatives will be implemented in collaboration with our development partners and private partners such as GIZ, World Bank, ITU, HPE, A4AI and more.
Commenting on the launch, Lacina Koné, the director-general and CEO of Smart Africa said, “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 national capacity building through the launch of SADA in Ghana.”
“At the heart of the digital transformation lies the need to bridge the digital skills gap of our continent’s future and present workforce. I would like to thank all our partners and the Republic of Ghana for the official onboarding of the SADA journey,” he added.
Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, minister of communications and digitalisation who was present at the launch, thanked Smart Africa and said, “Today marks a proud moment for the people of Ghana and Africa at large in the area of digital skills and empowering African citizens in taking advantage of the digital transformation.”
