In a COVID-19 pandemic where new inequalities have been created with rising youth unemployment widening the gap between the rich and the poor globally, Vodafone Ghana CEO, Patricia Obo-Nai, has reiterated the need for young people to acquire digital skills.

Madam Obo-Nai, who described the acquisition of digital skills among young people as no longer a choice, said COVID-19 has presented a significant momentum for economies on the African continent to create new opportunities to improve digital skills for the youth.

Speaking on the topic: Africa After COVID-19: Can The Economy Recover? at the Bruegel Annual Meetings this year, Madam Obo-Nai explained that Vodafone has already been working closely with businesses to ensure that they have digital solutions in agriculture, particularly in South Africa, where Vodafone is digitizing the whole agriculture value chain in that country.

In Ghana, she recounted how Vodafone supported many sectors including health, education and the mobile financial sectors in the pandemic.
Indeed, when the pandemic started in March this year, Vodafone had put together a six-point plan to save lives of citizens in order to deal with the health crisis.

To tackle the challenge, Vodafone increased its capacity to about 60 percent as more government services, health workers and micro businesses needed to get connected with more people working from home.

Vodafone put devices in the hands of health workers where a telecentre with 50 multilinguals were made available to Ghanaian doctors to enable them to share information on their phones while helping citizens.

The company also made educational content available online on its Instance School Platform which kept students apprise with their lessons in the pandemic.

Regarding mobile money and mobile financial services transactions, Vodafone has worked with central banks on the continent regarding financial inclusions and driving cashless payments and adjusting fees and charges in the pandemic.

In donations and in moneys in services across the world to support lives in this pandemic, Vodafone surpasses about 100 million euros as money given to support in the pandemic.

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