Deputy Minister for Tourism, Arts and Culture, Hon. Mark Okraku- Mantey has bemoaned the use of technology by the Ghanaian youth for conflicts and arguments.
He was speaking at the 12th Ghana Culture Day Symposium and the 3rd National Delegate Conference organized by Ghana Culture Forum at the Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre for Excellence in ICT Accra, on March 14, 2023.
The conference was dubbed “Culture, Technology and current trends-Making the youth the Centre of Transformation”.
At the event, Hon. Okraku-Mantey lamented over failure of the ghanaian culture to sell itself on social media.
He was disappointed that social media beefs garner more importance than the need for the culture to be sold. He described the languages used in social media beefs as distasteful due to their creation of what he calls, a hostile and toxic environment.
“The other side, pour their culture on us and we consume, but we struggle to sell our culture to the other side. What do we use ours for? Sometimes we go and find people beef and we all follow the beef with the same technology others are using to sell their cultures to you. We use distasteful language to create a toxic environment through the spread of false information and aggressive messages”.
Hon. Okraku-Mantey went on to urge the ghanaian youth to use technology to promote the Ghanaian culture.
“We have the power to change that narrative, we should use it to market our culture, build a better society, disseminate content”.
Hon. Mark Okraku- Mantey cited info from the Ghana Statistical Service which implied that 54.1% people in Ghana above the age of five years make use of working mobile phones.
According to him, this would improve the informational capabilities of modern technologies, which includes ICT and mobile phones.
“The Ghana Statistical Service shows that 54.1% of age 5 and above age group of the country’s population own functional mobile phones. This is good news, depending on the lens you wear, and so it shows that we cannot underestimate mobile phones or ICT or technology of today in terms of information. The younger generations we know too are more active on these gadgets”.
