Noni Hub, a private Information Technology (IT) organization in the Wa Municipality, has engaged stakeholders to identify challenges and possible solutions to the electronic business environment (E-commerce) in the Upper West region and the country at large.
The engagement was to identify the stake of E-commerce in promoting local economic development, creating jobs for young people, and to assess the state of Electronic business environment in the Upper West Region.
The training brought together youth-led organizations and representatives from the Simon Diedong Dombo University of Business and Integrated Development Studies (SDD-UBIDS) and Youth Enterprise Agency (YEA) to deliberate on promoting E-commerce.
Addressing participants at the stakeholder meeting in Wa on Monday, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Noni Hub, Mr. Sumaila Chakurah said the country is struggling to combat the challenge of youth unemployment.
“Youth unemployment has been underlined and there are different ways or digital policies that institutions are putting in place to ensure that they are able to address the challenges”, he observed.
He said even though the challenges are partly addressed, more needs to be done.
He observed that most of the companies in the country employ personnel from outside the country “which means that the skills needed to ensure that E-commerce create the necessary jobs opportunity for young people here is not yet honored because young people do not have the skills.”
“And if you are not able to have the required skills, it means that you cannot use E-commerce as a tool to boost the economy development”, he added.
He said the Noni Hub is committed to addressing this challenge as it strives to promote the skills of young people to create job and to develop the local economy.
Mr Chakurah was hopeful that the engagement would foster strong relationship among all stakeholders within the Upper West Region to ensure that they play crucial role in ensuring the local economy is boosted and also create jobs.
The guest speaker at the forum, Dr. Ibrahim Osman Adams, the Director for ICT for Development and Research and Head of Department for the Accountancy Department of UBIDS Business School, said the impact of E-commerce in the local economy can be looked in different perspectives but largely focusing on the most cost effective way doing the business.
He said the E-commerce platform can be efficient as comes with reduced cost of transaction in participating in the market.
“If you want to offer goods or services to a community instead of going to look for a shop in the market, you can look for an online platform and offer these goods for people to able them have access which will reduce transaction cost effect.
“Also you can rely on technology to be able to monitor and supervise if you have several shops across region… in that case, it will reduce the cost of going around to supervisor those shops”, he stated.
The organization also awarded certificate to some 16 females who had successfully undergone IT training at the Noni Hub.
The program was organized under the theme “The role of Ecommerce in Transforming the Local Economy for Job Creation and Economic Development”.