Story By: Rahamatu-Lahi Zakaria || Sanatu Zambang
Digital skills are important to our everyday life and countries are embracing the new way to improve and build a sustainable future. In the past years, there have been calls to improve and provide access to digital skills for all persons. One of the organisations in the northern region leading in this new space is Africa Skills Hub.
Africa Skills Hub, one of the new youth development hubs in the capital of the northern region, Tamale on the 8th of September, 2022 held its maiden edition of the Start-up summit at the Tamale Technical University for trainees who went through weeks of training on basic ICT and web development.
The Summit, supported by Mastercard Foundation, World Bank Africa, Ministry of Communications and Digitalisation, Young Africa Work and Ghana Tech Lab as part of the pathways to sustainable employment program was on the theme ” E-commerce and Web Development for Job Creation and Skill Development”.
Six teams; Agri Mall, Zuam, Recplast, Medvan, Melon Ghana and Youth Development Hub pitch their business ideas to a panel of judges and the audience. The team’s business innovations centred on using web development to tackle developmental challenges in their communities while providing employment opportunities for the teaming youth in their localities.
The innovations included designing a website to link farmers and consumers to farm produce, waste management, goods delivery services, etc. Three teams were awarded for their outstanding innovations and were given a citation with cash prizes.
Issahaku Napari Ishahak, the trainer for this cohort in an interview with this writer said he was not surprised by the winners of this startup summit. Though the team he had expected to be placed first did not get the position, he was still impressed with the outcome of the team’s presentation.
The judges for the day included Mr Abdul Jalil Bawa, a senior assistant registrar at the Tamale Technical University, Abdulai Seidu, an accountant at Ghana Education Service and Mr David Laweh Baako a senior research assistant at Tamale Technical University.
Africa Skills Hub (formerly known as Africa Internship Academy) is a youth employment accelerator and business incubator aiming to build Africa’s next generational change agents through practical and accessible learning and coaching tools, delivered online and offline using their internally designed Career Pathways Module.
