Online Scholarships: Ghana tops benefitting countries

Three Ghanaians,  Enoch Adjei, Hamadu Hassan and Anane Vida who have completed 102, 94 and 61 courses respectively emerged as top learners on the Commonwealth of Learning (CoL) Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) scholarship programme.

A statement by Angela Osei Gyan  stated that Ghana, through the Ghana Library Authority forms part of the four countries which includes Rwanda, Bangladesh and Kenya to benefit from the Commonwealth of Learning Scholarship programme.

The Authority, in partnership with CoL, enrolled 3400 Ghanaians on the Read2Skill project to study any of the over 5000 courses at no fee. Out of the 3400 beneficiaries, 2078 are active learners who have earned a total of 3054 certificates.

Speaking on the achievement, the Executive Director of the Ghana Library Authority, Mr. Hayford Siaw stated, “I am very glad that Ghanaians have taken the Read2Skill very seriously, however, I am not really surprised at the figures. Seeing the enthusiasm Ghanaians showed after the launch of Read2Skill, it was expected that they take it seriously as they have.”

“I would like to encourage Ghanaians who have received licenses but have not started learning to do so and start benefiting from the courses available or risk their offer being invoked and given to others on the waiting list” he emphasized.

Earlier this year, the Ghana Library Authority launched the Read2skill project to offer 1000 online scholarships to Ghanaians. Ghanaians embraced the project and within a few weeks, the Authority received more than 30,000 applications. Due to the massive response from Ghanaians, the Commonwealth of Learning offered 2400 more scholarship slots making a total of 3400 which are currently been utilized by the successful applicants to acquire new skills.