As part of measures to equip the youth with employable skills in the technology space, a Korean data labelling company, Datamaker (CEO: Lee, Enoch) has been training Ghanaian youth in data labelling for Artificial Intelligence (AI), since 2019.

The company seeks to raise professional data labellers in Ghana to advance the country’s AI industry and help reduce unemployment.

The company has also commenced processes to sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the University of Ghana to set up a workshop to train students in data science, AI, and data labelling.

The Managing Director of Datamaker, Mr. James Cha, disclosed this in an interview with the Daily Graphic at one of its promotional events, funded by KOTRA, at the Accra Mall on Thursday.

Data labelling
Data labelling refers to the process of adding tags or labels to natural data in the form of images, videos, text and audio, which form a representation of what class of objects the data belongs to and helps a machine learning model learn to identify that particular class of objects when encountered in data without a tag.

Mr. Cha explained that the purpose of the promotional event was to introduce the data labelling industry and Datamker to the public, and to let the public know of the job openings, for which quality training is included. It would help build capacities of the youth to gain essential skills in data labelling in Ghana and Africa at large.

“We do not only train the youth in data labelling. We also hire them to work on projects coming from Korea so they can earn some money.

“Since we came to Ghana in 2019, about 100 of the trainees have been connected to direct and indirect job opportunities”, he said.

While commending Ghana for building a robust infrastructure to facilitate the operations of tech companies, he urged the country to rollout programmes that would expose the citizenry to computer hardware and software to boost interest in information technology.
KOTRA
In a separate interview, the Director-General of KOTRA, Mr. Kim Youngsang, urged the potential candidates to take advantage of the opportunity offered them to gain employable skills and contribute to the development of the tech industry.

He pledged the commitment of the agency to rally Korean companies to invest in the country and promote human resource and economic development.

In an interaction with some of the beneficiaries, they expressed profound gratitude to Datamaker for the opportunity and appealed to the company to sustain the programme to benefit more people.

“I have learnt that when you are working with data, you have to be precise and there is no room for failure. I wish I could work with them so I would learn more,” one of the beneficiaries, Lawrence Edem Adinyira, said.