Noni Hub, an Information Technology (IT) firm in Wa, is promoting entrepreneurship in IT as part of efforts to help bridge the widening youth unemployment gap in the country.
It said the IT industry was a viable sector that could engage the youth in diverse ways, which would contribute to reducing the country’s unemployment rate.
Mr Sumaila Chakurah, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Noni Hub, who said this at a local start-up summit in Wa at the weekend for some youth in the region, stressed the need for both the government and the young people to prioritise the IT sector for job creation and acquisition.
The start-up summit was organized by Noni Hub in partnership with the Ghana Tech Lab for 34 youth in the region with funding from the MasterCard Foundation and World Bank, and supported by the Ministry of Communications and Digitalisation.
The summit was to afford the young people the opportunity to pitch their IT business ideas to experienced entrepreneurs as well as to expose the young entrepreneurs to investors after going through six weeks training in Mobile Application development.
It was under the “Pathways to Sustainable Employment” initiative to provide the young people with employable skills through IT.
Mr Chakurah said the beneficiaries would also go through ten months of incubation in areas such as product development, business modeling, and market strategy to further develop their ideas, and provide them with advanced skills in implementing those ideas.
“We are going to teach them how they can make their products investor ready so that when the investor sees the product he will be interested in the solutions that they are providing”, he explained.
The CEO added that the winners of the local start-up summit would have the opportunity to participate in a national summit to compete for funding and other support services.
Mr Chakurah appealed for support including logistics to enable them train more young people in IT saying, “because of the logistical challenges, many people apply but we are able to pick a few to train.”
Some of the beneficiaries of the training expressed gratitude to Noni Hub and its partners for the opportunity and said it would have an immense impact on their lives.
“I came here with zero knowledge in computers but today I can develop a mobile application. I am grateful to Noni Hub and its partners for the opportunity,” Ms Hadizatu Ismail, a participant, said.
On his part, Mr Mohamed Abdul Mumin, the Upper West Regional Director, Ghana Enterprise Agency (YEA), urged the youth in the region to take advantage of such opportunities as it was self-employable.
He encouraged the youth to strive to be their own bosses rather than depending on the government and other people for jobs.
