The initiative, launched at the University of Ghana, is specifically designed to encourage young females in Junior High (JHS) and Senior High Schools (SHS) to pursue technical fields.

Participating schools represented at the launch included the Accra Girls Senior High School and Achimota Senior High School.

The launch featured several activities, including a pep talk on the career prospect of STEM education.

Ms. Yvonne Asare- Yeboah GEA’s Director Responsible for Resource Development and Membership Services, emphasised that statistics over the years had shown a significant under-representation of girls in STEM, necessitating a targeted intervention.

She outlined the programme’s core strategy, which focuses on mentorship, innovation training, and practical career exposure by sending the young girls to GEA member organisations for hands-on industry experience.

“We thought that it was very necessary to embark on this project and then help these young girls so that they can pursue their STEM courses,” she said.
She added that the programme was a long-term commitment that had “come to stay.”

“ The programme is initially engaging seven schools, including Achimota School, Accra Girls, West African Secondary School, Ba Walesi Basic, and the University of Ghana Staff Village School,” she said.

Mr. Vebeke Sareem, Project Manager of the Norwegian Girls in Tech Project, expressed her outfit’s support for Ghana’s commitment to the initiative, noting that the Norwegian project started as a local initiative in 2003 before gaining national government funding and status in 2016.

Ms. Sareem stressed the global relevance of the programme, stating, “It is so important that we do get more girls into STEM and technical careers. And that doesn’t only apply in Norway, but all over the world.”
She had the expectation that the project would empower more girls to build self-esteem and know that they “also belong” in the vital work of developing new technologies for everyone.

Ghana faces a significant and persistent gender gap across the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) pipeline, a challenge that threatens the nation’s push for industrialization and a robust digital economy.

While women constitute a substantial portion of the overall tertiary student population, their representation drops sharply in core technical fields.

Recent institutional analyses indicate that the percentage of females graduating from tertiary education in engineering fields remains below 30% for many Sub-Saharan African countries, a trend closely mirrored in Ghana.