The founder of the Ghana National Association of Entrepreneurs, Dr Winfred Akapanga has observed that government alone cannot employ all the graduands who are churned out annually despite the many youth-focused interventions such as Nations Builders Corp Amongst others.
The International Labour Organisation, ILO, estimates that about 65 million youth aged between 15-24 years were unemployed in 2017 while youth unemployment remains 300% higher in this age bracket than the unemployment rates for adults aged over 25 years. Speaking at a job fair as a facilitator who took the job seekers through the topic’’ Marketing and Social Media’’, admonished them that one of the innovative ways of empowering themselves was through the use of social media where they could either brand, market or position themselves or products to attract local and international customers. While entreating the young graduates to form an association and to help market the products of businessmen in the region who cannot use social media to market their products, the founder indicated that as job seekers they could make a living through that. ‘’ In this highly Informational Communication Technology era,
Businesses cannot thrive very well without the deployment of social media and as
young graduates, you must take advantage of this trend to create jobs for yourselves and others
instead of relying solely on the government for jobs’, Dr. Akapanga admonished. Dansyn Innovation Social Organisation, Dansyn (ISO), a non-profit organization operating in the Upper East Region organized the job fair in Bolgatanga, the regional capital of the Upper East Region aimed at complementing the government’s effort at addressing the graduate unemployment problem in the country. This follows an earlier programme organized by Dansyn Innovation Social Organization with funding support from Mastercard Foundation Young Africa Works Project, World Bank, and Ministry of Communication in June 2020 this year trained much youth in the areas of Mobile Apps and
Web Development through the support of the Ghana Tech Lab in Accra. About 20 beneficiaries in the Upper East Region were trained in web development by Dansyn ISO in partnership with MasterCard Foundation, the World Bank, Ministry of Communications, Ghana, and Ghana Tech Lab, to help them to become web developers and to market their products to the wider community using the internet. The Bolgatanga 2020 Job Fair which brought together employers and job seekers and sponsored by Mastercard Foundation Young Africa Works Project, World Bank, and Ministry of Communication, allowed the employers to share with job seekers the necessary qualities needed for gaining employment.
Among some of the think -tank organizations which attended the programme included the Ghana Tech Lab in Accra Ghana National Association of Entrepreneurs, Bolgatanga Technical University (BTU), Cyber Ghana, a non-profitable Cyber Security Organization. The Chief Executive Officer(CEO) of Dansyn Innovation Social Organization, Mr. Daniel Nang, explained that his outfit decided to bring the employers and job seekers together to help address the challenges of unemployment among graduates. He indicated that while many of the beneficiaries have gained employment, others are also in incubation with his outfit, stressing’’ all this is to enable the youth gain employment and also employ others’’.
The CEO stated that Dansyn Innovation Social Organization, a non-profit organization for some time now has been supporting youth entrepreneurship with Training and Skill Development in Information Technology to make an Impact in the Community by Enhancing the Economic and Social Status of the People with special emphasis on women. Speaking at the Jobs fair which was under the theme ‘Creating sustainable employment through digital skills he disclosed that the job fair hoped to link prospective employees to potential employers.
He observed that the rising youth unemployment situation in the Upper East Region and the entire country of Ghana is due to job immobility and the digital skills gaps. A Base Innovations Leader of Ghana Tech Lab, partners for the Organization of the Job Fair Gabriel Quarshie, expressed the hope that the fair is to help young people leverage technology to gain decent employment.
For his Part the Laboratory and Network Administrator at the Department of ICT at the Bolgatanga Technical University, Richard Azunre cautioned the graduands to be very mindful about the way and manner they use social media and hinted that most employers use social media as the window of employing job seekers. ‘’Most job seekers don’t get employment because of the way and manner they conduct themselves through the use of social media.
The attitudes and behaviors of many people are reflected in the way and they chart with friends and others on the social media and their dress codes also counts’’, he warned. He also warned the general public to be very mindful about the way fraudsters use social media to defraud others and announced that the BTU is seeking accreditation from the National Accreditation Council Board to run diploma and degree programmes in Cyber Security and Forensic Studies.
He said the programme which had already established Cyber Security and Forensic Laboratory at the BTU is being funded with the support from the Royal Academy of Engineering, UK and Lloyd’s Register Foundation, UK. He stated that from the early next year 2020, the BTU would begin running short courses in Computer, Ethnical Hacking, Forensic Investigation for local professionals in ICT as well as established Cyber clubs in Junior and Senior High Schools to begin teaching of young graduates in Cyber Security and Forensic. Azunre Richard stressed the need for Cybersecurity issues to be part of radio programming adding the University is engaging some local radio stations to partner with them.
Apexnewsgh.com/Ghana/ Prosper Adankai
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