MTN Group and Ghana have inked a historic deal to promote the government’s flagship “One Million Coders Program,” which aims to give young Ghanaians digital, coding, and artificial intelligence skills to propel the nation’s digital transformation.
Ghana’s Minister of Communication, Digital Technology, and Innovation, Honourable Samuel Nartey George, and MTN Group President and CEO Ralph Mupita signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to discuss potential areas of cooperation on what the minister referred to as the flagship initiative of the new administration of President John Mahama on the fringes of the Mobile World Congress 2025 in Barcelona.
While MTN did not hesitate to offer to support the initiative, Samuel Nartey George, Minister of Communication, Digital Technology, and Innovation, engaged with the MTN Group and stated their desire for a partnership that will fuel the capacity of young Ghanaians in the areas of cybersecurity, data governance, digital technology, and artificial intelligence.
“We recognise that, as part of its 25th anniversary, MTN (Ghana) is making significant investments in Ghana. The MTN building, donated to the government of Ghana, will become one of our centres for excellence for artificial intelligence and software development. We are committed to backing MTN in this endeavour,” Minister George said.
Mupita thanked the minister and his delegation for two days of constructive engagements and for choosing MTN as a trusted partner.
“We are very focused on understanding the strategy Ghana has and how we as MTN Group and MTN Ghana can support it,” he said.
“We thank you for your commitment in terms of creating an enabling environment for us to carry on the work we are doing, very humbly though, to support the building out of the digital ecosystem that will be a catalyst for growth and expansion and meet the socioeconomic objectives of the Ghanaian government,” Mupita added.
Given that around 3 000 languages are spoken across Africa, it was incumbent on Africans to ensure that they worked on their own large language models to develop the solutions made possible through generative AI.
“We must develop our own talent on the African continent; we must develop our own software engineers and we must be doing more around coding to enable us to all be future fit,” Mupita said.
MTN Group Senior Vice President for Markets, Ebenezer Asante, said MTN was delighted to be part of the initiative, which was closely aligned to MTN’s strategic intent.
“Between MTN and Ghana we will partner using common projects to advance the cause of African development,” he said.
The MoU comes after the MTN Skills Academy was launched in 2023 in several MTN operational nations, including Ghana. The MTN Skills Academy seeks to make financial and digital skills training accessible throughout the continent.
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The Academy offers a variety of courses, such as those in coding, web development, digital marketing, and data analytics, with the goal of guaranteeing that by the end of 2025, 60% of adults and youth possess at least rudimentary knowledge of sustainable digital skills.
Credit: MTN Group
