The Chief Executive Officer of Edel Technology, Ethel Cofie, has highlighted digital literacy as a major challenge in Ghana despite ongoing efforts to digitalise the economy.
Speaking at the Citi Business Festival Roundtable on “Driving Business Growth in an Era of Digital Technology,” she noted that Ghana boasts a significant presence of development professionals in Africa, with approximately 7% of the continent’s professionals residing in the country.
Ethel Cofie attributed this achievement to various training programmes and initiatives in Ghana, which have contributed to a skilled workforce. However, she emphasised the need for more professionals to meet the growing demands of the economy.
Despite the progress made, Ethel Cofie pointed out that digital literacy remains a significant challenge in Ghana. She observed that many people lack the basic digital skills to perform simple tasks online, partly due to the widespread use of non-smartphones.
To address this issue, she urged the government to provide more digital services, which would help train the populace in digital literacy and enable them to fully leverage the benefits of technology.
“The World Bank had a report about two or three years ago, that Ghana carries about 7 per cent of the development professionals in Africa. We actually have a large population base. Between Ghana and Nigeria in West Africa, a lot of the remote workers, 7 per cent of them are professional developers partly because of the lot of programmes we are running, all these training. We have a good skill set but do we need more? Of course, we need more if the economy is going well.”
“Digital literacy is a big problem. So your average person does not have full-length digital literacy you need to be able to perform simple tasks partly because a large number of phones people carry are non-smart phones.
“It is with experiment with digital phones that you figure out this is what you do online, which is why one of the things I advocate for is the government to provide more services via digital channels to train the populace in digital literacy.”
