Dr Kenneth Ashigbey, Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Telecoms Chamber is calling for a collaborative effort between the public and private sectors to guarantee the long-term sustainability of the coding caravan initiative.
He described the Coding Caravan as a digital skills awareness campaign that attempts to teach children in underserved and hard-to-reach areas the basics of ICT and how to use digital tools to tackle social problems.
Coding is viewed as the process of converting ideas, solutions, and instructions into a computer-readable language, as well as instructing the machine on which actions to take and how to finish tasks.
Dr. Ashigbey was speaking in an interview with the Ghana News Agency about the coding caravan, which was organised by the Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications and the Institute of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Professionals Ghana.
“You cannot just do the awareness creation on the coding caravan and leave it,” he said, adding, “when you do that, then sustainability becomes a challenge.”
“We call for the intervention of public, private, and charitable organisations to help put resources together to promote the course,” he added.
This, he noted, would help put up ICT laboratories and coding centres for the deprived communities so that teachers in such areas can guide and impart ICT skills to the children.”
He also said the two organisations were committed to making the coding caravan sustainable because they reach students in remote areas in three regions every year to introduce them to the basics of coding and programming for creating applications.
Mr. David Gowu, Executive Director of the Institute of ICT Professionals Ghana, added that “coding enabled us to develop digital tools, mobile applications, and websites that can revolutionise sectors such as agriculture, healthcare, and education.”
According to him, these innovations could enhance productivity, accessibility, and efficiency in communities, and it was incumbent on students to take the study of coding seriously whenever the teams reached them in their schools.
