Ghana's Girls-in-ICT AI, Machine Learning and Big Data Bootcamp at the Kofi Annan Centre

Ghana's Ministry of Communications and Digitalisation, GIFEC and the Kofi Annan ICT Centre of Excellence, with Huawei Technologies Ghana as tertiary partner, run a national Girls-in-ICT initiative spanning upper-primary through tertiary education.

To build AI, machine learning, big data and cybersecurity skills among Ghanaian girls and young women, addressing the gender gap in ICT careers.

In September 2021 a 10-day residential programme trained 50 female university students in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Big Data and Cybersecurity as the tertiary strand of the initiative. Parallel lower-level tracks reached roughly 2,000 girls in the North East and Western North regions and 60,000 female senior-high students across Ashanti, Central and Eastern regions in 2021 (cybersecurity-focused), rising to 500 upper-primary and junior-high girls trained in the Greater Accra Region in June 2024.

Organisers reported that over 60% of trained girls had no prior experience with computers. The programme has continued expanding regionally each year, with 5,000 more girls planned for the Bono, Bono East, Ahafo, Savannah and Northern regions.

This is a genuinely national, multi-year, multi-region government programme with substantial reach across education levels, but published evidence remains participation counts and a baseline statistic rather than a formal outcomes evaluation.