Library Authority secures additional scholarship slots

The Ghana Library Authority (GhLA) has secured an additional 1,000 scholarship slots from the Commonwealth of Learning for acquiring knowledge and certificates online.

This brings the total number of slots for Ghanaians to 2,000, the largest among the four beneficiary Commonwealth nations in the partnership.

The e-learning project, dubbed Read2Skill, launched on January 6, this year, was initially meant to offer only 1,000 scholarships to Ghanaians to undertake courses on the world’s largest open learning platform, Udemy.

Over-subscription

In an interview, the Executive Director of the GhLA, Mr Hayford Siaw, explained that the request for additional scholarships was as a result of the enthusiasm and massive interest expressed by Ghanaians in the electronic learning (e-learning) project.

“We had received 31,574 applications from all the 16 regions as of the end of January 2020, competing for just 1,000 scholarship slots.

So if we had not negotiated for more, then clearly you can see that many Ghanaians would have been denied access to this opportunity.

What we did was to engage our partners to extend the opportunity for more Ghanaians,” he said.

He, however, indicated that no new applications would be accepted, explaining that the additional slots would be given to applicants in the backlog.

Giving a breakdown, Mr Siaw said applications from the Greater Accra Region were the highest, with 13,895 submissions, while the Savannah Region recorded the lowest with 106 applications.

He said more males also applied for the e-learning programme than females.

“In the Greater Accra Region, for instance, 9,295 out of the 13,895 applicants were males,” Mr Siaw added.

Courses

He said out of the many courses available on the Udemy, majority of the applicants selected Project Management and Operations as their preferred course, with Procurement being the least selected.

Applicants included the unemployed, students, teachers, bankers, members of the security agencies and media practitioners.

In all, employees of the Ghana Education Service (GES) topped the list of applicants, making up 4.2 per cent.

They included teachers from kindergarten to senior high schools, while those who are out of job or yet to be engaged in meaningful employment stood at 3.4 per cent.

“Other areas which recorded significant numbers of applicants were workers of ministries, assemblies, security agencies and the private sector. Staff of the telecommunication companies and banking institutions also showed significant interest,” Mr Siaw added.

Online courses available on the Read2Skill programme include Data Science, Cloud Computing, Project Management, IT Operations, Design, Finance and Accounting, Human Resource, Leadership and Management and Office Productivity.

Successful candidates will earn certification on completion of any of the courses on offer and have up till the end of October 2020 to enrol.