The Minister of State for Government Communications, Felix Kwakye Ofosu, has announced that the government has allocated GH¢100 million to the One Million Coders Program as part of efforts to create job opportunities for the youth.
Speaking on JoyNews Roundtable on the 2025 budget, he stated that despite the program’s name, its scope extends beyond coding to include training in web design, web hosting, and other ICT-related skills.
“There’s a program we call the One Million Coders Program. Even though we call it the One Million Coders Program, which would suggest that we are focused only on coders, it involves a broad range of activities.
“There’s room for people to be trained in web design, web hosting, and other such activities along the ICT value chain. 100 million Ghana cedis has been put into that program,” he said.
He noted that the government’s focus on job creation stems from the high youth unemployment rate, which left about two million young Ghanaians without jobs.
Mr Ofosu stated that GH¢100 million would go into training of the youth, noting that “there are those who need training and the others may need some further upgrading in their skill to be competitive within the job market.
“Once that is done, there are those who can set up on their own because they are coders. Some people can go out there and search for jobs in the area of web hosting, web designing, and what have you.”
He also highlighted other employment initiatives, including the proposed FinTech fund, which will be rolled out later, and the Big Push infrastructure agenda.
“The other job creation options – for instance, when we talk about Big Push, it essentially is about spending huge amounts of money to build modern infrastructure, which has the potential to open up our country and accelerate rapid economic development.
“Now, the process of spending on construction of these major projects would involve the employment of persons, both skilled and unskilled, to help execute the project.
“For instance, there are people who may be civil engineers, who may have finished school and are sitting at home. Some people may be architects, there are draftsmen, there are surveyors, and what have you,” Mr Ofosu added.
Source: myjoyonline.com