The Minister for Communication and Digitalisation Ursula Owusu Ekuful has stated that government is committed to helping young people especially girls to develop skills in STEM education to help reduce the rate of unemployment and spur development in the country.

With women and girls in Ghana being under-represented in areas of Science, technology, engineering and mathematics related professions, the Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications has launched the Seats For Ladies in STEM project to bridge the gender gap and encourage girls to participate in STEM.

The project was launched under the theme, “Bridging the gap in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics in Ghana.”

Speaking in an interview, Mrs. Owusu Ekuful mentioned that government is supporting entrepreneurs involved in STEM through the procurement of their services.

“Many of the interventions that we are using in our country today were developed by our Ghanaian entrepreneurs. We can mention the national ID and the SIMS registration application. They were all developed by local Ghanaian companies. So if we give them the chance and government is the largest procurer of goods and services and government also procures these innovative applications and systems developed by our young people. It also gives them a chance to grow and showcase what they are doing on the national and international arena”, she said.

Chief Executive of the Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications, Dr. Ken Ashigbey added that there’s the need to bridge the gender gap in STEM to accelerate Ghana’s development.

“Basically, what we are saying is that the Ministry of Communication and Digitalisation has been doing the girls' in ICT project. You also have the situation where various members of the chamber  such as MTN, Vodafone, AirtelTigo, and others, have been involved in providing opportunities for ladies in STEM. But then, we know that generally the numbers are still not good.”

“So the whole objective of Seats for ladies in STEM is to be able to pull together all of these partners, bring other partners in so that we can achieve some equity, some parity when it comes to gender distribution in the field of Science Technology Engineering and Maths. We believe if we are able to do that it will help us accelerate Ghana's performance,” he said.

Partners of the initiative were encouraged to ensure that there is equality in the recruitment of personnel in their various organizations.