Technology and Digitisation have become household names in recent times. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic with the resulting lockdowns and other restrictions has further highlighted the need for digital adoption or adaptation. This is even more prominent in business interactions and operations.
Ghana is not an exception to this new development. A GSMA report captioned “The state of mobile in Ghana’s tech ecosystem” stipulated that the mobile adoption rate in Ghana stood at 55%. Also, a World Bank Group report in 2019 stated that mobile account ownership increased by nearly 200 percent between 2014 and 2017 in Ghana.
Despite all these development in Ghana, however, many women in rural Ghana lack the basic skills to use technology to improve their business operations or promote their businesses.
To help bridge this gap in digital adoption, hapaSpace has launched a program dubbed SmartWoman under its DigiWorks Project. The pilot program focuses on equipping 150 women with basic digital skills at Adjamesu in the Ashanti region of Ghana. DigiWorks is part of a project sponsored by GIZ’s Digital Transformation Center and eSkills for Girls and implemented by seven (7) innovation hubs in Ghana.
The program is divided into two work packages.
Work package 1 focuses on women who are into farming, hairdressing, and petty trading. These women will be trained on;
- Social media marketing
- Phone photography
- Digital content creation
- Business management
- Mobile money (MOMO) usage and security
- And digital financial management
Work package 2 will also introduce women in fashion at Ajemesu to the above content in addition to FashionDiva (an app that will help them with data and financial management).
The SmartWoman project is earmarked to run until the third week in April 2022. The women are taught in groups of ten (10) to ensure active participation of each one of them and also to observe the COVID-19 protocols. Each group will have 5-days of intensive training with a lot of practical sessions.
The programme was launched at the Ajamesu community centre on Fri Feb 18th, 2022 with the presence of the Abusua Panyin Nana Kwadwo Abu of Aduana Clan, elders of the town, the Agric Officer of Ajamesu, staff of GIZ, representative from GIFEC and the women of Ajamesu.
HapaSpace is aiming to train about 150 women in total. Hopefully, this will pave the way for these women to adopt technology as a complimentary means to scale their businesses beyond the borders of Ajamesu.
