Norwegian Ambassador Pays Working Visit to GIFEC
The Norwegian Ambassador to Ghana, His Excellency Gunnar Adreas Holm, has paid a working visit to the Ghana Investment Fund for Electronic Communications (GIFEC). The purpose of the visit was to familiarize himself with the operations of the Fund, and receive briefing on the Digital Transformation Centres (DTC) Project.
The Administrator of GIFEC, Mr. Kofi Asante in his welcome remarks conveyed the fund’s appreciation for his visit and highlighted some key achievements of the fund and the selection of Ghana as part of key global partners in the delivery of the DTC programme. He also expressed his gratitude to the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD), an agency of the Norwegian government, for providing financial support for the implementation of the project.
He mentioned during a presentation, that the main objective of the project is to expand the digital capabilities and benefits of ICTs to the marginalized population, particularly in the un-served and underserved communities in Ghana. He also disclosed that for mutual intelligibility, the local dialect is adopted during the training of persons from the informal sector. In addition, the course has also been tailored to meet the needs of specific individuals, depending on their educational backgrounds.
He concluded his presentation by reiterating GIFEC’s commitment to performing its obligations by ensuring delivery of training modules, monitoring and evaluation of training deliverables, in addition to periodic briefings to partners on the project, to ensure the achievement of inclusion in the digital space.
The Ambassador briefly interacted with trainees of the ongoing Master Training session at Kyebi during a Zoom Call, where he learned that online certification assessment is conducted for all trainers, on the Cisco platform.
The Ambassador, on his part expressed his excitement about the working visit and the ability of his government to contribute to key developmental initiatives in Ghana and several other countries, adding that Ghana has a rich potential market for development.
His Excellency Andreas Holm was also happy to learn about the contributions of all partners in the project; the ITU, GIFEC, Cisco for coming together to achieve digital inclusion. He added that he “looks forward to learning about the impact of the project and its application in the daily lives of participants”, especially with the impact of COVID 19. He is positive that this initiative will improve lives and open up new opportunities for beneficiaries.
The Digital Transformation Centres Project is an initiative by ITU to support selected countries to develop digital skills, mainly at the basic and intermediate levels particularly in the underserved communities. In Ghana, the project is being implemented by GIFEC in collaboration with CISCO and the Norwegian Government (The Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD) to implement the Digital Transformation Center (DTC) initiative.
