SADA launches national digital academy in Ghana

The Ghanaian government has officially unveiled its national digital academy developed in partnership with the Smart Africa Digital Academy (SADA). This, after SADA launched similar academies in the Republic of Congo and Rwanda earlier this year.

As a pan-African dynamic learning ecosystem, SADA says it aims to improve digital skills qualifications, 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, 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 this official launch, SADA implemented in April a federated cloud proof-of-value workshop in Accra where over 100 people from the public and private sector were trained. This workshop aimed to strengthen the countries’ data centres and cloud services ecosystem with the collaboration of our private sector partners, HPE and Intel.

Additionally, last week, SADA held two other peer learning workshops; one on digital payment and the other on artificial intelligence, during which more than 60 experts gathered to gain knowledge and exchange best practices on digital payment ecosystem, and in developing AI frameworks in Ghana.

Advanced computing

As part of the next steps, Smart Africa and Ghana’s 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 of trainers in advanced computing. They 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 digital skills of its citizens. We are pleased to contribute positively to the nation 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 officially onboarding the SADA journey,” he added.

Said Minister of Communications and Digitalisation, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, at the launch: “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.”

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