The second cohort, drawn from upper primary and junior high schools in the three regions, underwent 12 weeks of intensive training in robotics, scratch programming and website design. Telecel DigiTech Academy is a nationwide initiative aimed at equipping young learners with digital and problem-solving skills in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).

At the graduation ceremonies, participating teams of students showcased robotics prototypes, scratch programming applications and their developed websites, all designed to tackle local challenges in fire safety, flooding, community street lighting, security and disaster prevention, among others.

Mary Magdalene, one of the graduating students from Jasico Demonstration Junior High School, who was part of the team that designed a Smart Water Level Monitoring System to help reduce water wastage and prevent home flooding in her community, said, “The training has been an eye opener. I always wanted to be a military officer but being part of the DigiTech Academy in the last few months has built my interest in engineering. Also, I feel that being an engineer will help me introduce more solutions to problems in Jasikan and beyond”.

Education officials in the middle belt have called for more support to expand the initiative to reach all districts, citing its power of introducing students to future careers in STEM.

The Municipal Coordinating Director for Jasikan, Mr. James Awapoayi praised the students’ ingenuity, saying the training programme has transformed learning in participating schools across the municipality and hoped it would continue.

“The world is changing towards more digitalisation, and we bear the duty to train and prepare young people to take advantage of this change. I am delighted the DigiTech Academy is doing exactly that and it’s our desire that the training is expanded to cover as many schools as possible within and beyond the municipality,” Mr. Awapoayi said.

Since its inception in October last year, Telecel DigiTech Academy has been bridging the digital skills divide, particularly for children in underserved areas who would otherwise have limited access to hands-on technology education.

Rita Agyeiwaa Rockson, Head of Foundation, Sustainability and External Communications at Telecel Ghana, said the graduates have demonstrated that innovation potential exists far beyond the urban centres and DigiTech Academy exists to tap into the STEM talent of more young people.

“The tech creativity and brilliance we’ve seen in these three cities in the middle belt confirms that talent is everywhere. When you give students access, tools and mentorship, they can produce meaningful solutions that improve the quality of life in their communities,” Rita said. “The most important takeaway is for all of you participants to practise and apply the new knowledge consistently.”

The Telecel DigiTech Academy, organised in partnership with Asustem Robotics and the Mingo Foundation, combines in-person practical sessions with virtual learning, aligning with the Ghana Education Service curriculum throughout the academic term.

Nationwide, the Digitech Academy has so far trained over 1,000 students across 10 regions for this school term alone. Last term, 700 students from six regions graduated from the training.