LET'S PRODUCE OWN ICT PRODUCTS

Dignitaries including the Education Minister after the opening ceremony

Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com

By William Yaw Owusu

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Minister of Education Prof Jane Naana Opoku Agyemang says she would be interested in learning how the country could reduce its status in the use of foreign ICT products.

“Some of us feel we have imported too many for teaching and learning and it is about time we moved beyond that. I will be interested in how we intend to reduce our status as consumers of products that we have had no hand in creating even as we push for the use of ICT.”

The minister was speaking on behalf of President John Dramani Mahama at the opening of the 65 Annual New Year School and Conference at the Great Hall University of Ghana in Accra yesterday.

The annual event which is held to find solutions to pressing national development issues was under the theme: “Information and Communication Technology (ICT) - driven education for sustainable human development: Challenges and prospects.”

Prof. Opoku Agyemang said the Ghanaian public “is so interested in education that nearly everyone has an opinion on education,” adding “Most of the time these opinion are fully expressed in terms of which direction education should take.”

“Parents and guardians are so interested in education in Ghana that most go out of their way to make great investments in it and of course in expectation of outputs that they desire and this is how it should be.”

She said that “we have had so many intervention strategies that have worked,” and added that “What we need to do now is to move to making the management of education efficient, ensure adequate time on tasks, review and make curricular relevant, enhance teacher preparation and study, support community interests and enhance students commitment to learning.”

“Progress has been made at the basic level in terms of enrolment and retention, transition rates have improved. We need to expand access beyond this level, hence the determination to construct more schools.”

She said other initiative include a new public university, funding structures at the colleges of education, reviewing the existence and the status of the polytechnics.

The former Vice Chancellor of the University of Cape Coast said building of new schools has been carefully planned so that every district had a fair share of the distribution of state resources.

Prof. Jophus Anamoa-Mensah, a former Vice Chancellor of the University of Education, Winneba who delivered the keynote address said education and skills development had become crucial in national development.

Giving statistics and copious quotations to explain the theme for the conference, he said currently, there was a what he called ‘silent academic revolution’ taking place and the transformation had been heightened by the deployment of ICT tools.

He went ahead to prescribe various solutions for the way forward for education, emphasizing the need for ICT to be the mainstay of national development agenda.

Prof. Ernest Aryeetey, Vice Chancellor of the University of Ghana said using ICT to harness human capital for accelerated development should not be underestimated.

He said Ghana needs a highly skilled workforce to promote development and added that through access to affordable and quality education, the country would be able to realize its dream.

He also said ICT has the potential to deal with a lot of the challenges associated with accelerated development.

Prof. Yaw Oheneba-Sakyi, Director of Institute of Continuing and Distance Education of University of Ghana, hosts of the New Year School, said they have decided to review their programmes by working on broader topics that covers long periods.

He said this year’s focus would be on ICT and it is expected to run for the next five years, starting with the education sector.

Prof Justice S.K. Date-Bah, a recently retired Supreme Court judge who is also the Chairman of the University Council, chairing the programme said no society could afford to be left out of the ICT revolution at the moment.

Philip Sowah, Managing Director of Airtel, major sponsors of this year’s event said ICT is heavily influencing every aspect of human life and the company was taking advantage to support the government’s effort to make ICT the mainstay of development.