A 14-year-old JHS 2 student of St. Paul’s Catholic Junior High in Tamale, Christiana Wehle Awiah, has emerged winner of the Ministry of Communications and Digitalization’s Northern Region Girls in ICT competition.
Out of the 100 Girls-in-ICT who participated in the contest, Christiana scored 100 points to receive the ultimate cash prize of GHC3,000, a laptop, a plaque and a certificate of participation.
Amanda Daal 13, from Kpandai District and Husnatu Mohammed 14, from Tamale Metropolitan came in the second and third positions with a laptop, a plaque, certificate and a cash prize of GHC2,500 and GHC2000 respectively.
As part of their awards, the Ministery of Communications and it partners will construct a new and fully furbished ICT labs in the various schools of all three winners.
In her short remarks, Christiana expressed gratitude to the Minister of Communications and Digitalization, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful and other stakeholders for the initiative and promised to make them proud.
“Thanks to Girls in ICT, my 999 friends and I sincerely vow that we will uphold Mrs. Ursula Owusu-Ekuful’s challenge to pursue careers in the STEM field since she believed in us, and we will undoubtedly make her proud.”
She added that her initial intention was to go out there and make her headmistress proud but she was exposed to a lot in the ICT training and that has changed her plans going forward.
“I merely wanted to please my headmistress, but after being exposed to this, I’ve decided to pursue the prospect of lecturing in computer languages rather than the human languages I’ve been nurturing,” She proudly said.
She also thanked GIFEC, KACE, MTN, the Northern Regional Coordinating Council, GES, facilitators and their parents for the unflinching support throughout the training.
The Girls-in-ICT initiative is one of the flagship programmes of the Ministry of Communications and is in line with the International Girls-in-ICT Day, an initiative backed by all International Telecommunications Union (ITU) Member States.
By: Shaharan Suhuyini