An eleven-year-old basic six pupil, Mohammed Rahima from T.I Ahmadiya Islamic School at Kpalbusi in the North East Gonja district of the Savannah Region, has won the best Girls in ICT programme in the region.

She beat 999 other pupils in the Ministry of Communications and Digitalisation assessment test by scoring 92 out of 100.

Mohammed Rahima is part of the 1,000 girls from Upper Primary and JHS in the seven districts of the Savannah region to participate in the Ministry of Communications and Digitalisation Girls in ICT program which climaxed at Damongo in the Savannah Regional Capital on May 9.

Rahima, on behalf of her colleagues, thanked the Ministry for the initiative and described the girls in ICT program as life changing experience for them as some of them never touched a computer in their lives until the arrival of the Girls In ICT programme.

The girls program forms part of strategies to ensure that Ghana achieves the sustainable development goals in Ghana’s ICT for accelerated development policy of bridging the gender digital divide which is being implemented through Ghana Investment Fund for Electronic Communication (GIFEC) and supported by MTN, KACE, GIZ,ATC and KODRIS Africa.

Hon Ursula Owusu-Ekuful in a speech to climax the Girls in ICT programme at Damongo said she is optimistic that the programme will live it’s Mark in the hearts and minds of the people of the Savannah Region.

She added that, she was extremely happy with the interest that the Savannah region showed in Girls in ICT day by seeing girls as beneficiary of people they are grooming to handover the batton for them to drive the development of the country because they’re building a digital Ghana which needs it’s own people to manage the infrastructure and services that they’re putting in place.

Out of the 1,000 trained girls, 100 of them who best performed in the training were awarded with certificates for participating in the program coupled with brand new laptops with the best third, Second and First girls grabbing GH2,000.00, GH2,500.00 and Gh3,000.00 respectively.

Meanwhile, the Savannah Regional Minister, Saeed Muhazudeen Jibril, in his address, thanked the Ministry for including girls as part of calls for action to empower women and girls to achieve their goals and aspirations in ICT.

He added that as one of the newly created regions, the Savannah Region has huge natural resources but has a lot of challenges, especially in education and other economic developments which requires that there is an innovative way to fix the challenges and ICT is the most important key to these challenges.

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