The German Development Cooperation (GDC), in collaboration with four private partners, launched an international centre of excellence – the Aya Institute of Finance and Management – to contribute to an improvement in the skills of current and future employees in Ghana’s financial sector, including banking, capital markets, and insurance.
The vision of the Aya Institute is to be a catalyst for the development of people and leadership, as well as socio-economic change across Africa.
Aya’s training team is equipped with modern tools and teaching methods for long-term, well-structured, and demand-oriented professional training, said Aya’s Executive Director, Abenaa Kessewaa Brown.
Ms. Brown added that the sector is in a phase of consolidation, and its continued growth is hinged on a well-trained workforce that is digitally-minded and equipped for the future of the industry.
It was announced that a minimum of 1,500 individuals will receive training. When asked how quickly Aya could reach this number, a member of Aya’s governing council, John Maxwell Addo, said there would be no issues reaching that number, and they expect to far exceed it within the next few years.
Ms. Brown said the institute’s goal is to breach the existing skills gap in the country’s financial sector.
With 40 years’ experience providing training to financial institutions across Africa, Aya’s founding partners are confident they will be able to deliver the same results in Ghana.
Along with providing mid-career professionals with training, Aya will also focus on training new graduates. The Head of Sustainable Development for GIZ-Ghana, a leading partner of the Aya Institute, Gerald Guskowski, said they are focused on the employability gap that exists for new graduates.
Mr. Guskowski said: “Graduates lack various soft skills, as well as special technical competencies in order to be able to enter the job market directly”.
To address this gap, Aya has created a 12-week intensive programme to prepare graduates for jobs in the finance sector.
The institute’s Job Readiness Programme will also train an additional 150 university graduates, with the goal of having 75 percent of them employed within six months after having completed the training. Aya will be promoting their programme through social media soon to encourage recent graduates to apply.
About the Aya Institute of Finance and Management
The Aya Institute of Finance and Management is a German-Ghanaian initiative for excellence. The centre emerged from a public-private partnership that combines international and local actors in the financial sector. Aya is built up on more than 40 years of international experience in high quality training, particularly in the financial sector, and running training centres, as well as a profound knowledge of the Ghanaian market and financial services sector.
