Author: Madrama James | Published: 18 hours ago
Central Equatoria State Deputy Governor Paulino Lukudu Obede and Information Minister Patrick Nyarsuk pose with state officials and development partners after unveiling the Digital Innovation for Skills and Knowledge (DISK) programme. Photo: Courtesy.
The Central Equatoria State Ministry of Information and Communication has announced plans to establish a Digital Innovation for Skills and Knowledge (DISK) programme to expand digital skills across the state.
The five-year initiative will establish three Digital Skills Centres in Juba and Yei to provide digital literacy and ICT training to more than 8,000 beneficiaries, including youth, women, civil servants, and entrepreneurs.
The plan was announced following a meeting chaired by Central Equatoria State Deputy Governor Paulino Lukudu with partners, including Scenious Hub, to introduce the DISK programme yesterday.
Speaking during the meeting, Deputy Governor Lukudu said the programme is intended to address the state’s digital literacy gap.
“We understand that only 23 or 21 percent of women are using, for example, telephones. Even the telephone itself, we don’t know how to use it properly. I can say I’m among the people who may not properly use the phones we have. We buy the latest phones, for example iPhone 17 or whatever it is, but I may not use it like a person who knows how to use it properly,” he said, adding that there is a need to teach digital skills.
“We still have somebody complaining that his SIM card is full and he cannot add another name. He didn’t know that people are already saving new numbers to Google accounts or different accounts. He’s still thinking that everything must be in the SIM card. Once the SIM card is full, you buy another SIM card. And this digital illiteracy is the gap that we wanted to close,” he added.
The State Minister of Information, Nyarsuk James Patrick, said the programme aims to provide digital literacy and ICT training to more than 8,000 beneficiaries across Central Equatoria State.
“We expect that this center will be able at least to educate and to inspire and to build capacity and knowledge of the skill of 5,000 South Sudanese that are based in central Equatoria State and 3,000 civil servants from the government institution,” he said.
Poni Henry, Manager of Scenious Hub, said the project is expected to cost more than $2 million and will cover seven key areas, including infrastructure, technology, training, and programme management.
“The total is 2,806,100 and it looks at seven major areas. That is the renovation of the building, the equipment and technology, human resources, the program delivery, connectivity and utilities, management and governance evaluation and institutional overhead.
“So generally, those are the areas where the investment needs to be done and we’re looking at 8,000 plus people being trained within the different basic ICT skills, multimedia skills, that’s photography, videography, communication skills, entrepreneurship skills, coding and so forth,” Poni said.
The meeting concluded with a call for continued collaboration to advance digital transformation and improve digital infrastructure in Central Equatoria State.
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