An Innovation and Digital Entrepreneurship Expert at the Communications Ministry has stressed Government’s commitment to explore and utilise innovations in solving Ghana’s problems.
According to Clara Pinkrah-Sam government has begun to put in the necessary efforts and measures to ensure that this becomes reality.
She added that government seeks to achieve this plan by focusing lot more on youth enterprise and investing more in that regard to encourage more youth to follow that path.
“We know the challenges we have with garbage, electricity and sanitation and many other things. There’s encouragement for the youth to use innovations and come up with applications that can be built on and eventually used by us as Ghanaians and even outside to solve similar problems as its been done in some other countries.”
She explained that government is focused on tackling this from both policy reforms and operational perspectives so it succeeds.
Pinkrah-Sam revealed there are initiatives that government has introduced in order to reach its vision of solving the country’s problems with innovation.
She indicated government’s willingness to invest in innovations that are viable and to groom the best innovators that will come up so it is appealing for investors.
“The approach of government has been on two levels. Now ICT is inculcated in the curriculum to ensure every child has a practical feel of what technology is like and then those who will develop the affection and desire to use it as career can come up with innovations. Government is also ensuring that gender disparity in the ICT industry is bridged by ensuring that more females go into that sector.”
Dave McClure, Partner, 500 Startups insists that even though the technology industry is hampered by lots of challenges especially in Ghana, there are lot of Ghanaians who have innovative ideas.
He noted that most people in Ghana required investments as the most important inputs to ensure they succeed.
“There’s a lot of talented people, even here in Ghana there are some great entrepreneur. There’s nothing really holding anyone back except just the willingness to invest in lots of smart people locally. Getting more government and corporate involvement to help provide capital is helpful; another thing is to make sure government and corporate world becomes the buyer and customer for services as well as investors.”
These inputs were made on the sidelines of a workshop held for startup businesses in the technology and innovation industry.
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