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Thursday May 2, 2024

International Day of the African Child press release

Nationally, 2.6 million children 6 to 17 years1 that were currently attending school did not use an ICT device in the three months preceding Census Night (April to June 2021). Over a third (35.2%) of children 6 to 17 years that were currently attending school did not use an ICT device compared to 30.1 percent of those that attended school in the past and 85.5 percent of children who have never attended school. More than half of children attending school in the Savannah (51.6%), North East (51.0%), and Oti (50.2%) regions did not use an ICT device within the three-month period Two in every five (41.5%) children attending school did not access the internet in the three-month period. The Oti Region (59.7%), which had the highest percentage, is one of eight regions that had more than half of children attending school not accessing the internet in the previous three months: North East (56.1%), Upper West (57.5%), Savannah (55.9%), Northern (53.1%), Bono East (52.7%), Upper East (52.5%) and Volta (50.5%). When comparing different age groups, the percentage of children currently attending school that did not use an ICT declined with age: 41.1% of children 6 to 11 years, 38.2% of children 12 to 14 years, and 22.1% of children 15 to 17 years currently attending school did not use an ICT device in the three months preceding Census Night. The same pattern holds for internet usage within the period with 46.5% of school children 6 to 11 years, 45.2% of those 12 to 14 years, and 34.6% of those 15 to 17 years not accessing the internet. In all, 3.3 million children in Ghana aged 6 to 17 years did not use an ICT device within the three-month period. Over a third of a million (383,697) of them lived in households where no one used an ICT device within the three months. About a quarter of these children resided in the Northern Region (98,298) which had the highest number of children living in households where no one used an ICT device followed distantly by the Savannah (47,416) and North East (33,281) regions. The International Day of the African Child is commemorated annually on June 16th. The theme for 2023 “The rights of the child in the digital environment”. According to the African Union, “The overall objective of the DAC 2023 is to raise awareness on the promotion and protection of children’s rights in the digital environment and to encourage Member States and other relevant stakeholders to make commitments towards the realisation of children’s rights in the digital environment.” Further information on the ICT usage of children is available in the 2021 PHC Thematic Briefs on Digital Exclusion in Ghana which can be downloaded from www.census2021.statsghana.gov.gh. Disaggregated statistics by age on ICT usage are directly accessible from the Ghana Statistical Service StatsBank https://statsbank.statsghana.gov.gh.

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