Aya Institute launched to promote skills enhancement of financial sector professionals
The Aya Institute for Finance & Management, an international training centre of excellence, has been launched in Accra.
The Institute, which emerged from a public private partnership of the German Development Cooperation and four private partners, is expected to contribute to an improvement in the capacities of future and current employees of the financial sector in Ghana.
According to the United Nations Capital Development Fund, financial inclusion is positioned prominently as an enabler of other developmental goals in the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.
Many individuals and companies often make uninformed choices when utilising financial services due to lack of or inadequate financial education, and the inability of financial sector staff to provide suitable financial solutions and valuable services.
Banks and other financial institutions struggle to find sufficiently qualified staff who are key to the sustainable development of the financial sector. The Ghanaian financial sector needs qualified and specialised staff to increase efficiency and remain competitive in a challenging and evolving market environment.
To foster the continued growth of the Ghanaian financial services sector and ensure inclusion, more digitally minded, well-trained talent is required.
The vision of the Aya Institute is to be a catalyst for people development, ethical, and inspirational leadership as well as socio-economic change across Africa – one learner at a time. Aya’s training programs follow a learner-centric approach, where the learner is the focus and an active participant instead of being a passive recipient of content.
Aya Institute’s founding partners have successfully provided training solutions to the largest financial institutions across Africa; thus, the centre is built upon more than 40 years of international experience in high-quality training, particularly in the financial sector.
“We are excited to introduce our unique learning experience to the financial services industry and all sectors of the Ghanaian economy, to help develop the skills of teams and improve their performance and productivity. The Aya Institute year to date has trained about 400 professionals from 11 institutions so far, 27% of whom have been women. 99% of participants who took the feedback questionnaire are satisfied with the participatory learning methods which have facilitated capacity building and supported these learners to improve their skills and accelerate their careers,” said the Executive Director at the Aya Institute of Finance & Management, Abenaa Kessewaa Brown, at the launch.
The Aya Institute offers technical and soft skills training in open and tailor-made formats as well as a job readiness module that ensures university graduates are made fit for a career in the financial sector in a 3 month intensive training session that includes a 4-week internship phase.
“Closing the employability gap and the mismatch between the industry’s high demand for qualified personnel, and the numerous job-seeking university graduates, is very critical to the growth of the sector. It is for this reason that we have, together with our partners, introduced the job-readiness program – the Aya Young Professionals Program. It will train 150 university graduates, 75% of whom are expected to be employed six months after the training,” explained Gerald Guskowski, Head of Sustainable Economic Development, GIZ-Ghana, at the launch.
Aya benefits from the support of its prestigious founding partners through a public-private partnership under the develoPPP programme of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).
Aya’s partners include Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH (the major implementing organisation of German technical cooperation), IPC (Internationale Projekt Consult GmbH – a German international consulting firm), Krapa Ghana Foundation (a Ghanaian company limited by guarantee, focused on education and youth development), Chemmedia AG and Quipu GmbH (two German software providers specialising in e-learning and IT for financial institutions).
Dörte Weidig, Managing Partner, IPC GmbH said, “At IPC, we look back at 30 years of global experience delivering state-of-the-art training for staff and managers in Eastern Europe, East and South Africa, Asia, and now increasingly in Western Africa. We are proud to bring our impactful training approach and expertise to Ghana where we have been active for over 10 years.”
John Maxwell Addo, a member of the Aya Governing Council said am excited to finally see the Aya Institute for Finance and Management launched. It has taken a long time to get here. Aya seeks to fill a gap in the Ghanaian market by bringing world-class faculty and learners together for unique learning experiences that will ultimately add value to participants and their careers and help to transform the country as a whole.”
Source: Ghana Business
