Ghana Knowledge and Skills Bank launched - Platform set to bridge skills gap

The government has launched the Ghana Knowledge and Skills Bank (GKSB), a comprehensive digital educational hub that gives students access to educational materials, online tutoring and a platform for students to interact and study.

Apart from the enormous resource and learning materials, including past questions, the free-access platform powered by artificial intelligence (AI) has options for self-learning and self-assessment.

It also allows users to create or join forums for learning and sharing of ideas, giving a classroom feeling in the digital space.

The portal also has a career planning tool, and an online tutoring system that assists users to overcome their challenges in any topic or subject area.

Most importantly, the portal can be accessed offline, making it possible for users to download the resource materials and later have access to them without the use of the internet.

Users have the option of accessing the online tutoring in local languages, resolving any language challenge that would impede access to the portal.

The portal, which is now live at www.gksb.gov.gh, can be utilised by students at all levels.

It was developed by a local technological company, Nponto Technologies.

It is part of the digitalisation agenda of the government, with support from the World Bank.

Ghana is the second country in Africa after Egypt to have such a national digital educational infrastructure in place.

The skills bank was launched yesterday by the Minister of Education, Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum, and the Minister of Communications and Digitilisation, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, at the Accra Digital Centre.

Background

Giving a background to the project, Mrs Owusu-Ekuful said the GKSB was initially part of the e-transform project, which began in 2015, but hit a snag, and needed to be revived in 2017.

She said the government approached the World Bank in 2017, and was able to negotiate for the GKSB to become part of the successor to the e-transform, leading to a $200 million project known as the Ghana Digital Accelerated Project which was successfully implemented in June this year.

“Under this new project, we have had the privilege of designing the GKSB, which provides students a vast array of resources, and gives them access to quality education in all corners of Ghana,” she said.

Digitilisation

Mrs Owusu-Ekuful described the portal as a momentous acquisition that pointed to the importance of digitilisation at the centre of the transformation that would take the country to the next level of development.

“This marks a significant milestone towards digital transformation, inclusive development and achieving the United Nations sustainable Development Goal of inclusive and sustainable education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all,” she added.

She said digitilisation and technology had enormous opportunities, which must be harnessed in all fields, including education for sustainable development and growth.

“In a world driven by technology, it is absolutely imperative that we harness the power of technology to evolutionalise the way we teach and learn,” she added.

The Minister of Communication said the government had made digitalisation the cornerstone of its development agenda.

Such a move, she explained, had led to massive investment in digital infrastructure and platforms, resulting in significant connectivity to the internet across the country among more than 900 government institutions, including metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies (MMDAs) and the digitalisation of government service.

Collaboration

Dr Adutwum said the skills bank was a testament of the government’s commitment to take education to a higher level by not only creating an enabling teaching and learning environment, but also making education accessible to all through technology.

“We want to lift teaching and learning to the highest standard to ensure that our education is competitive with the rest of the world. I do not understand why we cannot have the best students in the world coming from Ghana,” he added.

Currently, he said, the government had embarked on transforming education through infrastructural development, and the provision of digital tools such as tablets to students and teachers.

He lauded the collaboration between the ministries of Communication and Education, which, he said, brought the project into fruition.

“Serious change is going to happen if we digitilise. There will be smart board, tablet for every student, tied into a learning management system. With the GKSB, the students can go online and type all the resources available,” he added.

The Co-Founder of Nponto Technologies, Deborah Asmah, appealed to teachers and educators to help to expand the resources on the portal by uploading their teaching materials and other useful information.

“Now the platform is ready and it does not have all the resources, so we appeal to teachers to go online and upload their contents on it, and they will be rewarded,” she added.

Writer’s email: emma.hawkson@graphic.com.gh