Dr. Bawumia announces youth policies centred on technology and vocational training for jobs*

The Vice President and Flagbearer of the NPP for the 2024 Presidential Election, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, has revealed an ambitious plan to build about one million Ghanaian digital talents as part of his transformative Digital Ghana vision.

Addressing Ghanaians yesterday to unveil his vision and priorities for the country if elected president, Dr. Bawumia said his vision is to build a Digital Ghana vision, which will apply technology to transform key sectors of the economy, including agriculture, healthcare, education, manufacturing, and the financial sector, for a prosperous digital economy that will make Ghana a digital hub and also create jobs for the youth.

To help realise the Digital Ghana vision, Dr. Bawumia also revealed that he aims to also build the digital talents Ghana needs for the global digital revolution and revealed plans to train at least 200,000 youth per year on digital software skills, which, he said, will not only provide them jobs in Ghana but also on the global market.

"I want to see Ghana build the digital talent we require for the Fourth Industrial Revolution. This will mean providing digital and software skills to hundreds of thousands of youth. In collaboration with the private sector, we will train at least 200,000 youth per year for the next five years. This, along with other policies, will create jobs for the youth, including school dropouts."

"I also want to enhance the repositioning of the education system towards STEM, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence and vocational skills to cope with the demands of the fourth Industrial Revolution and job creation. In collaboration with the private sector, we will aim to train at least 1,000,000 software developers in five years (200,000 per year). As software developers. They will have job opportunities worldwide."

Dr. Bawumia expressed confidence that the Ghanaian has the talent and what it takes to be number in the world in many areas but are often derailed by pessimism and impossibility mindsets; adding that his government will champion the mindset of possibilities in order to bring out the best from every Ghanaian.

"I want to encourage Ghanaians to have a mindset of possibilities and not impossibilities," he said.

"The challenges we must overcome as a country are too important to let our political differences derail us. There is a critical failure of mindset that manifests itself in the absence of core values, patriotism and principles within our society. We need to invigorate the can do spirit of the Ghanaian to believe that we can even do better than the advanced countries if we put our minds to it."

"For example, our students from Mamfe Girls and Prempeh College have won international robotic competitions against their peers in the US, Germany and South Korea. We have to apply the same mindset of beating the world in robotics, singathons and cookathons to every sphere of activity. We must believe IT IS POSSIBLE!"

"This must be inculcated in our children from school. This is why we are going to introduce a growth mindset curriculum to help students build critical skills such us problem solving, risk taking, opportunity spotting and design thinking.'