What's up everyone it's your girl Kenzie here from Layton Sports Cards, and I'm ripping a personal for Neil B I've got a 2023 Panini prism UFC hobby box Alrighty Neil good luck To more autos luck good luck Tista John Jones That's the doll We have silver is gonna be Paul Craig ruby wave rookie of tar Tiara on the fly weights and home monitors mark Coleman First blades we have Aqua Jake Matthews rookie on the welterweight division That one's gonna be 27 of 49 on that one Jake Matthews The beautiful looking car Canon ear on the ruby and dominance of Oliveira Silver is Derek Brunson Aqua wave Brian battled rookie and all-out Dilla Shaw Brock Lesnar Gathe we've got silver Josh Emmett Ruby wave Derek Brunson and Hall monitors of St. Pierre Sean Burrini Cue Oliveira, we've got purple is Irene Aldena Bantam weight 59 of 149 Hyper Jorge Mazvedal and dominators of St. Pierre Silver rookie of Martin Boudet rookie Aqua wave of Renate Fockery Denon you know Phyllis silver Red is Arnold Allen from the featherweight division 194 of 199 Ruby wave Song and dominators John Jones Ferguson Silver rookie of Jonathan Pierce all out Miokic first auto up Not numbered it. Oh, just kidding to 99. We've got Marvin Vittori on the red middleweight class there Vittori is gonna be the first auto. We have orange Dominic Cruz nice one there 96 of 99 on that orange hyper Kyle Phillips rookie and a Vokonospe on the fearless. Oh Charles Oliveira nice one there 50 of 149 Hyper Morales rookie and Oliveira fearless Regas Hasbulla rookie Silver of Marlin Vera Dominators Moreno Heavyweight a tank Abbott on the legendary signatures There's a cool one. Nice hit there, Neil Legendary signatures tank Abbott last pack Blue is gonna be Rob font Bantam weight division 99 a 175 hyper Vittori and all out of to Evasa Alrighty Neil that will do it for your box. Thanks again for hopping in we'll get these cards sent right out to you


Yeah. Okay, great. Thank you. I'll try to get us back on to time a little bit. Natasha is not able to attend and I will give the talk for him. The slides are available with this bit that you need to get them by each 2022. I from GPUs. What are GPUs? Why do we need them? How are they useful for bio conductor and where can we find can I find GPUs? I'll also do a little bit of a live demo with an actual GPU equipped machine in the room. How many folks are actually computing on GPUs? Not all that many. All right. Well, and you know, the idea is that we're going to be seeing more software that sort of does a better job if a GPU is available. And so we want to be prepared to use that type of software. In fact, bio conductor packages are coming online that will make use of it and we will show you one of those. Graphical processing unit has many cores is capable of parallel computation and is different from a CPU. Streaming multi processors are used in there. Each streaming multi processor is a multi core machine. Each GPU is their core multi multi core machine. The streaming multi processors share the same global memory. And each streaming multi processor has streaming processors, which are the individual cores running threads. And those technical issues one can learn about on one's own time. The idea is that if the computation is set up properly, they can go faster. And there are now well exercised packages for statistical learning Keras and TensorFlow that are becoming more prevalent. So a couple of bio conductor packages and there are some new ones being submitted that take advantage of GPUs. Do this by using reticulate to interface to TensorFlow or Keras. Reticulate is the R Python interface. And you can get GPUs to try these things out fairly easily from all the cloud providers. And I'm going to talk about one interface to the Google cloud provider that is made by NHGRI through NHGRI funding. It's called Anvil. Genomic data science analysis visualization and informatics lab space. So Anvil has a very refined user interface in which when you get yourself on there, you've logged in and you have started a workspace, you can configure a machine to use. And one of the things you can do is say I'm going to enable GPUs and I will select a particular type of GPU. There's a whole family of them available here. And I'll tell the system how many GPUs I want. And then I will get this thing going by pushing launch. And we'll do a little bit of that in just a moment. This is just a view of a workspace that Detech made that helps do all these demonstrations. And there's a notebook, a Python, a Jupyter notebook within that that will demonstrate this. And we'll jump over there in a moment. Now, it turns out that in Terra, this is the underlying system for using Anvil. It is not yet possible to use our studio with GPUs. So this is done with a Jupyter notebook, but that will be remedied in the near future. And so we were going to also develop a new container family that has machine learning equipment, including the food and stuff for NVIDIA GPUs embedded in it so you don't have to do these installations. And if you have other questions, you can ask Detech on Slack or pose questions in the support site. I will just show a little bit of this live. This is a Jupyter notebook here running in Terra. The system that we have configured is the default R version. And I've asked for four CPUs and two Tesla D4 GPUs. And that is going to cost me 91 cents per hour to operate. And we have a work, a notebook here. And we can run some code in the notebook. For example, we can check the bio conductor version. And we can then verify I installed all of these things previously. So Keras is available. We have a full Python configuration report here telling us what is there. And then when we want to start to use TensorFlow, we can ask whether the GPU is known to it. Sometimes that's a bit of a cumbersome thing to establish. In this case, TensorFlow knows that the GPU is there. And we can ask it to list all the devices, the CPU and the GPU. So this is just using Reticulate to operate with the TensorFlow Python packages and run certain functions and methods that are available there. And here we can ask, again, is the GPU available? And it says it is. And so now I'm not going to run this code. This has to do with the generation of some data. But here is what it looks like when you actually want to fit a variational autoencoder. This function is defined in the VA experts package. And the different components, which are autoencoder and deep learning concepts implemented as layers, value units, sigmoidal activation function and so forth, all very high level expression of how we are going to build up this autoencoder, run it. And then this, I'll run that one there. I think that should work okay.  And that takes a second to run. But it's a nice way of showing the actual components of the deep learning model that is going to be used with the GPU. So I'm going to stop there because all of this stuff is available for your inspection in the open thanks to Natesh's work. And if there are questions, I might be able to answer some. But I hope this is sufficiently explanatory that you could get going if you wanted to on your own. Anybody have a question for Natesh? Can you just go back to the URL at the beginning of the slides? Sure. These slides have the URL at the end of the moment here. Something wrong with the desk here. Thank you. Okay. I see a question from online for an earlier speaker. We are done with a few questions for Qian from Levi. Levi asks, have you thought about submitting reused metadata or data to Zenodo through the REST interface? Like through Zen4r. Is Qian still on? Is Qian still here? Maybe not. We need access to the slide. Someone can't get access to the slides. These slides? Yeah. Yeah, the slides are not accessible. Okay. Qian is now on the call. Hi, Qian. Welcome back. There was a question for you. Okay. Sure. From Levi, he says, have you thought about submitting reused metadata or data to Zenodo through its REST interface? For example, Zen4r. Zenodo, yeah. I think that can be one of the, one of the places that we share the data sites. We have considered sharing the data to account some like cloud space like UnView. We were just thinking about that. So Zenodo could be a place that we deposit the data. But I think we are more likely to deposit the recipes which are more lightweight so people can generate the data locally using our functions. There can be different possibilities. Anybody else have a question for any of our speakers? Is there a possibility in future for, we say, sparse array to work better with GPUs to speed up sort of like loading and operations on some of the big sparse arrays? So you're seeing sparse array to work better with GPUs in the future? Oh. I was thinking about this when this was presenting about the GPUs that maybe, you know, it could be, if there's a possibility, maybe to even, to improve, to improve even more the performance of those objects by using GPUs. Yeah. Why not? I'm not there yet. You can see my list of things I still have to do before that thing works. License notes faster. All right then. I think we're going to end the session and we'll see you guys right next thing. Thank you.


Imano Mumuni, who is a senior national coordinator at the Digital Transformation Center Ghana GIZ to give us a few opening remarks. Imano, where is Imano? I mean, Imano, if I promise that if you come, I'll give you a hug as well. Okay, Imano doesn't want my hug. Anyway, let us continue and welcome on to the platform Professor Wolfgang Schultz, who's Research Director at the Institute of Internet and Society. Thanks, thanks so much. Thank you. A warm welcome from my side as the research partner of a project about which you will learn something during the next couple of minutes. And we are very thankful that you are here, that we can have this discussion and a kind of validation of the things that we in the academic realm have produced. I will very briefly introduce our institute so that you know who you are dealing with. We are the first institute in Germany that is dedicated to Internet and Society research. There were some institutes around, some researchers around before we were funded, and they basically did things revolving around technology. And our focus is on Internet and Society, societal implications of the digital change. And we have grown quite a bit. We are now 70 people, researchers from different fields working on these issues and different research programs. And I would like very briefly, because I think it's good to understand our perspective, and introduce our way of thinking about digital transformation. And one aspect which is extremely important to us is that we perceive technology not as something outside society which is now changing society, but it is in itself a social construct. And we are interested in better understanding how that goes about, how we can shape these technological developments in a way that it benefits the society and individuals and is in line with human rights and other values that we share. So that's the first thing we find important in our research. The second one is that we don't really believe that there is an inherent tension between innovation and governance. That is something that comes up very often when it's about, like, economy, shall we regulate here or not? And then you can say, please be careful with regulation that can hamper innovation here. And that's true in a sense, but it needn't be true. And we are extremely interested in finding intelligent instruments of regulation that are innovation friendly or even support innovation in a way. But to do that, you have to be innovative in terms of governance as well. And that's something we want to be part of, of this conversation, how to govern the society, the digital society, in ways that do not hamper innovation if possible. So that's the second element of our thinking here. And maybe the most important thing is we are interested in the impact of research. We are not just ivory tower people just producing papers. We do that and we have to do that in academic life, but we are also interested in societal impact of our research. And you will see that the project types we have and what brings us together here is something which very much has to do with the real world impact of research. And finally, from the beginning, we had the feeling and the belief that when we talk about these issues, it's something global. We do not just have to study things in Germany, we have to interact with other researchers, with colleagues, with NGOs, with other stakeholders all over the world to better understand the phenomenon. And that brings me to the second point I would like to very briefly discuss and that is the network of internet research centers. All centers like ours working on internet and society issues around the globe. We started that after our institute was founded and now there are over 100 centers all over the world that work with us together to better understand the developments. But we have still some white spots on the map of the NOC and it was our ambition from the beginning to fill them, to find more colleagues to interact with, especially in Africa. We have some colleagues we are working with but there is room for more networking here. There is room for more of the African voice of researchers in the international community and we would be happy if that can be achieved. And so that's one of our goals. Maybe very briefly about how we operate as network of internet research centers. What we do is obviously we want to convene people. We have regional conferences, we have global conferences in which we discuss things like gig economy and other developments. There is also a teaching component there. We have summer schools for example and hope to establish some summer schools with participants from sub Sahara region as well. And we have created some formats of knowledge production which we believe are innovative in a way. And we call them research sprints and research clinics. And the concept behind that is that we bring together for a specific period of time, maybe a week, maybe three months, young researchers from different cultural backgrounds, from different disciplinary perspectives, mixed with other people from other stakeholder fields, from NGOs, from the industry and so on. And that can be helpful to solve specific problems in a field. And it's not the old-fashioned long projects of a year or something which end up in a big report, but it's more problem-solving orientated. And that is a method that we have applied also to the issue we are discussing today, the platformization of work and especially what we call gig economy. And we are very happy that for this double purpose to try to create a greater network, especially in Africa, and to solve problems in the field of gig economy, that we made use of this concept of research sprints. We brought fellows together and the fellows are here. Hello to you. They conducted research on this issue and we will learn about these results of the research in a couple of minutes and want to discuss them. And I think personally that it worked out beautifully to have a dedicated team of young researchers from different parts of the world working together and trying to better understand, especially what gig economy means for Ghana and what implications it has in terms of policy recommendations, for example. This is all embedded in a project that we are performing together with the GIZ, which already has been mentioned, the Deutsche Gesellschaft Internationale Zusammenarbeit. There are our partners here, they fund this project. We are extremely thankful for the good cooperation with the GIZ. And this project is called SET as you can see here, and that stands for sustainability, entrepreneurship and digitization. So a specific focus on the digital economy and the project will conduct these kind of research sprints in different parts of the world. You can see here that it is closely connected to where the GIZ has or will establish the digital transformation centers where they are building up and have built up here but elsewhere. And so we have some focus on Africa as you can see. We will also have projects in Indonesia and Vietnam. Kosovo has been a region where we have been working and on the map also as Mexico for these kind of projects. That is a brief overview, but now to the project that brings us together here right now. Where do we stand with this project on ferro online gig economy in Ghana? I mentioned already that the core is the research sprint that is researchers working together and investigating the situation and coming to conclusions in terms of policy implications here. Identifying challenges and the implications. We had yesterday and I found extremely helpful very down to earth multi-stakeholder discussion where for example we had debates about what does that mean, the findings mean for the new labor law, the reform of labor law in Ghana. What can we learn from the research that we had here? That is only one example from many that we had yesterday. And now finally as the final element of this project we are here for this panel discussion and I'm extremely thankful that we can have this panel discussion. And my thanks goes to the panelists obviously. Thanks so much that you are willing to discuss the issues with us and to the fellows. I mentioned them already. I'm extremely grateful that you dedicated your time, your energy, your expertise to bring this about. And obviously also our friends and colleagues from the GIZ that make that all possible. So thanks so much and I'm looking forward to the panel discussion. Thank you. But before we get into the panel discussion, Mohammed is here with us and so Mohammed also has a few welcome notes to give us. Please put your hands together for Mohammed. So it's Iman Omumuni. This is the name. And it's really exciting to be here. I was here already yesterday and I see a lot of familiar faces so it means that we did some good work yesterday and we are continuing the conversation. But just to tell you a bit about what the Digital Transformation Center, is supporting this event. What we do is that we have this mandate from the German government to work with the local or Ghana government to advance Digital Transformation. And the way we do that is to see how we can bridge the gap when it comes to rural and urban gaps because we know that these are gaps that are existing and we have a lot of positive stories to tell as a country. We talk about how the penetration of Internet and mobile phones is going through the roof in the country and these are things that we proudly talk about. But what we often forget about is that there's a big population in our country that are still left out of this transformation that the country is enjoying. And these are people in the rural areas who do not have access to Internet, they do not have access to digital tools that could connect them to the rest of the world. So the Digital Transformation Center is looking at how do we bridge this gap? How do we include people that are not geographically accessible when it comes to digital tools? And then we also have, we also know that women are even more marginalized when it comes to the access, the access that we talk about. And people living with disabilities are even further down that line. So we're trying to bring all of these groups together to equip them with the necessary skills that would see them to the next level. And integrated in this Digital Transformation Center, other regional and global projects, which means that they are also implemented in other countries aside Ghana. So we have some focus in tech entrepreneurship, which is the MEC IT in Africa, working in Ghana since 2019, supporting tech entrepreneurship and supporting tech ecosystems locally here in Ghana, and then connecting it to this regional perspective. We also are interested in e-commerce. So e-commerce is what connects buyers and sellers electronically and ensures that we have access to the goods and services we need. There's a project within the Digital Transformation Center that is working with SMEs that are not having e-commerce. E-commerce as a revenue stream. And we train them to integrate that into their business models. And then also working with government on the policy level. The policy level is really important for us because this is what guides action. So we're working with the Ministry of Communication on how to come up with or how to implement the E-payment blueprint that was also supported by the Smart Africa Alliance. We are also particularly interested in emerging technology. So we are working in the area of artificial intelligence with a project called Fair Forward. And there are a few partners here in the room that are working with this project. So we're trying to advance artificial intelligence locally, ensuring that we have more and more talents in that space, but also supporting and making data available because data is the full world of artificial intelligence. So this is important for me to paint this picture because I know there are lots of partners in the room just so you know that it's a collection of activities that are happening in the center and we are always open to collaboration. I think this event is also important for us because even as we go out to impact skills in the lives of people in the rural areas that we are so concerned about, we often get questions around the need for digital skills. So why people ask this question? Why do we even place a lot of importance on digital skills? And you always have to link it to some economic benefits because this is what matters to them. They need to know how this relates to their livelihood. And it comes back to the point on gig economy because gig economy really opens your world up where you provide the services that you have to whoever needs it and without a digital platform, it's difficult for you to reach people outside your immediate environment. So it's a concept that is not so new to Ghana because we've been doing gig economy for God knows how long, but what this whole activity is about is how to use digital tools, digital platforms to really fast track this process where people feel a part of this world that we live in and not just limited to their immediate environment. And we are super excited to be working with our colleagues from the headquarters, mainly the gig economy flagship because they are those pushing this really strongly, but also the institute that has the strong mandate and strong interest like you've presented to support with their knowledge. And knowledge is really important because once we do a good research, then we know exactly where to invest our resources, what actions can be guided with this research. And I know there was a lot of deliberation going on yesterday and today's another day where we build upon the knowledge that has been shared yesterday and I would like to entreat all of you to really engage with the conversation but also think about what you can take from this conversation and what you can implement in your organization, your activity and your business, wherever I find myself because it's a topic that is cross-cutting, it's a topic that affects all of us and it's a topic that if you push wealth, we would benefit a lot from. So thank you so much and I would also like to thank the researchers, the fellows because I know there's a lot of effort that has gone into it, a lot of brain power and we are curious to see what we can learn from it and how we can push everything forward. So thanks so much and I'll hand it back. Thank you, Emmanuel. I mean it's not everyday people take the changing of their names so well so thank you very much for that. Well, I think it's time for us to get straight into the conversation. I'm going to call up three people who are going to guide us in this conversation. Firstly, we have Dr Augustine Aldame who's the CEO of the Ghana Chamber of Technology. Doug, if you can please join us. We appreciate it. Thank you. Then we have Frank Cuesi-Adeto who is the National Project Coordinator, Skill up Ghana ILO. And then finally we have Dr Theofilos Adomaco, Director of Consultancy Management, Development and Productivity Institute. I mean I think at the heart of it two main things eventually we want to find out or we want to explore and I'm sure there are other questions that will come up from the conversation. One of them has to be with how easy or difficult or what are the best ways of finding out the skills gaps and who has the skill to fit which gap. That's on one side. And then the other side of the conversation also is how do we govern the space in such a way that you know everybody is either a treated fairly or be compensated fairly. And you know people don't fall along the way. I think at the heart of it that is where the conversation is to be headed in. And I'm just wondering your initial thoughts so far about the conversations that have gone on and then we can get deeper into the issues that we want to discuss today. So firstly I just want to find out from you generally how the space is governed, generally how people within the economy find work, are found and given work and then the sort of governance that exists around the space. I just want your general thoughts on that. Yeah thank you very much. To be honest with you, this is a sector that is not, call it well-organized. So we don't have the framework that regulates the environment. So you have a friend who talks to you, this is what is going on. So it's okay, can I also pick up a few things and you also start you know working. It's quite difficult to identify the right persons to do what is required. You may be lucky to get a good guy that will fit in but you realize that there's a lot of, especially when we are challenged with skills that relate to digitization and all. So it's quite difficult to have people the right fit for the environment. It's even worse when people know that yes, there's nobody who is actually monitoring to see what I'm doing. And that creates a problem. So you want something delivered within a certain space of time but it's delayed. And of course there are other challenges we have with the internet connectivity which is a huge issue. You know because here data is very expensive. It's not what the internet connectivity is. It's not stable for people to work with that speed that is required to make. So it's an open area which needs a lot of effort to have a properly defined framework that will help us you know move and catch up with. Doc, if I may find out for you, why is this moderation of the space so critical? For anyone who might have any questions in their mind as to why that moderation of the space is important. Why is it so important that we moderate the space? I mean if everybody can get a gig or be connected to a gig or have an opportunity without necessarily having to go through so many barriers, I mean what's wrong with that? So I would say that the... So as you know I'm not one to advocate or push for rushed regulation. I think that if there's going to be regulation it has to be effective. And it's important to make sure that the right structures are put in place to ensure that any time regulations are put in place they are fit for purpose and they are effective and that there's also structures and resources and will power towards their enforcement. That is the only instance in which regulation will serve any purpose for which it is put to. Now I would say that you mentioned earlier what is gig economy in the Ghanaian context and the first thing that came to mind was because really there are any work situations that we have is a gig economy. It's essentially talking about time-limited work that you are able to procure to sort of help make ends meet et cetera. I would say that the main difference between gig economy work on the online labor market and perhaps a formal, for lack of a better word, employment system where you have an office et cetera would be the nature, the definition, the contracting of the labor relationship between the person who is delivering the service, their labor services and the person contracting them for their labor services. And that is where essentially the question of regulation would come in. Like my colleague said, it's a space that is still forming and there are lots of components to it. So if you look at online labor market, okay, of course the online component, there would be laws that would touch on that. Data protection, cyber security et cetera. When it comes, and depending on the particular service that is being delivered, there might be an already existing law that touches on it. So if you would remember recently, the government made a move to essentially require and ensure that people who are operating Airbnb pay taxes. But there was already an existing framework which covered the hospitality industry within which that fell. So if there are services within that space that already touch existing industries, then you would have to look at how there's intersection and how best to regulate, so that you don't have situations where there's a lot of pushback et cetera. And at the end of the day, the point is not being achieved yet. And so the push for regulation would come, for me, would come along two lines. One is ensuring safety and security and the ability to fully explore opportunities within the space. And the second part would be the social protection because once it's a labor issue, there are some issues there of labor protection et cetera that might need to be taken care of with regulation. But as always, I would say that it's important to really understand and also build on existing frameworks to be able to have effective regulation, not just any regulation. I'll be coming back to you later to ask you about what is existing and probably what needs to be added on. And now I'll be coming back to the two of you on that. But Doctor, I don't know. I'm now starting to think through also the people who actually work within that space, these online labor markets and what sort of skills that you need to have to actually exist in there. How are they being noticed? How are they being sourced? How are they being paid? Because at the end of the day, that's what really matters. How is that working out in Ghana specifically? Because the context, of course, for this conversation is Ghana. From your research and from your conversations and from your interactions, how is that working out in Ghana? The people themselves, because I think at the heart of it, they are the ones who move and make it happen. Thank you for your question. Indeed, gig economy has been reversed for a long time. We normally have come across, they were like by day, where a piece of job is given to somebody to be executed and the person is paid just after the work. It comes as freelance, it comes as people are hired on a contractual basis by time, et cetera, et cetera. But now, the scale and the fall are growing because of current digital technology. The pandemic has also screwed it up. Then also, we as people have become a little bit sophisticated to the extent that we want quality of service for our lifestyle. For a lot of us have been it. If you take the musicians, the commenters, painters, contractors, people who work on projects, road construction, most of them come under the gig economy. So how do they survive? They need special skills. First and foremost, management skills because you must be able to plan, able to organize your work, able to contact your customers, relate well with them so that they can give you further services for you to make a living. Another skill that is also required is entrepreneurial skills so that you can support opportunities, identify customers and relate with them. Then the almighty digital technology which gives you a bigger picture to relate with everybody in the world if you want it to go along that line. Then also, stop skills. Negotiation is critical, team building. Then also customer service. For customer service, we all know we have a big problem in the country. People deliver and they are unable to meet within time. Sometimes the goods doesn't come at all or it's delivered late and you may even call the person and you won't get him or her. I think my favorite one is the goods are damaged. I don't know why I experience it so often. So these are the few skills that you need to get. But you must also not lose sight of the fact that some of them who have practiced this for a long time failed to do the social protection issue and at a later stage in their career they are disadvantaged and they put a blame on society. If you take our musicians, et cetera, et cetera, they have said so if you want to now look at it from that perspective the social protection element will have to be strongly featured in the regulation so that we don't travel 10 years to come and somebody is even down with malaria and he expects society to take him to hospital and if that doesn't come up, the person take offense. So I think these skills are very, very important. Thank you for that insight. When Doc was talking, one thought hit me about first of all that on the skills side of the conversation and even how they acquire the skills in the first place then the platforms on which they can showcase their skills like you were saying it's not a very regulated space and so a lot of things are kind of all over the place. Are we saying that that's the same thing? I mean we've seen platforms up work and things like that globally but why can't we have that sort of situation here in Ghana and really what are the policy gaps for example that from your experience you've noticed that we can easily plug to make it a more sanitary, for want of a better expression space. Yeah I think when you look at this carefully you realize that most of the people who fall within this category are within the informal sector. Now the informal sector is very huge in Ghana and also unregulated so it becomes a problem. How are we going to formalize such a huge population of people? Yes, people have gone to school or maybe went through apprenticeship under somebody and I have my skill, I can do ABCD and you want to come and tell me that I have to go through this regimen and it's not only just about going through but once you are going through it counts at a cost. You have to incur some costs, you have to go through some processes which most of the people are not willing to go through. But it's important that we come to agree that yes you can do your own thing but you will not survive it which is a problem, that's where social protection comes in. So we should be looking at government trying to work around this in a way that you don't push the people away. We have been talking about maybe one vehicle is to have an association of these people. So if they have an association then it means that there is somebody who is in charge, who can call them and they are ready to listen can bring them together, get some people to walk them through what is required. At the end of the day they should understand that this works in nears to their benefit. So it's important that we if we push too hard they will go off. Will that work though? I could be wrong but for the last 15 years of my working life there has never been a year when organized labour unions don't go on strike. I don't know if anybody holds a different opinion. That seems to be the trajectory. A labour union they are fighting for equality or they are fighting for compensation being improved. It just seems to be a cycle that goes on and on. Online labour market seems to be an avenue for us to figure out a new way around the conversation. So if we are going back into that same conversation of organized labour having a union, having a leader can we just going back in that infinite loop? That's what it seems to me like. Not really. Of course we have the challenge because of a lot of things. If you are an employer you need to break in the revenue to be able to pay. But here we are looking at calling the informal sector. Yes, you can be your own boss but you need to take certain steps to formalize your work. Especially if you want more revenue then people should know what you are producing. But these soft skills we don't have. Somebody is in his corner, he is satisfied with doing it. You mentioned it, I want you to give me an order and it takes forever. So these are things that we need to get to the people that come on. If you don't have the skills to even go online to do your thing then we can help you put your product out there. So long as you are short of quality, timely delivery then certainly you are going to make the revenue. So people should know more of the advantages that this brings to us other than all the troubles they think they are going through. That comes in. There is clearly a gap that needs to be filled but we are sort of caught between over-regulation on one side and lack of regulation on one side. Where regulation at least ensures that the service you are getting is of a certain standard and you can definitely get what you are expecting. There is the other side of we having grown up or been in a situation where literally everything is so regulated that it makes things very difficult and that's why we are trying to find a workaround. So really where are we in that situation? Where for example with the labour laws as we have it in the country the policies that we have governing work or the world of work where are the potential gaps existing for an online working platform and things like that. Where are we? Because honestly if I have to go back to what exists today it's not very attractive. That's the only reason why I'm trying to find an alternative and if the alternative is going to bring me back to where I started from then why did I start in the first place? I think one thing that I would like to say is that some of the issues that you mentioned are not peculiar to Ghana. It is essentially inherent in the online labour market and perhaps in certain spaces there are certain structures that help even things out a bit but there are certain fundamental issues that are inherent in the online labour market and it's one of those things that is going to take a lot of work, trial and error et cetera to really figure out. So for instance the services that are delivered using online labour platforms vary very wildly and the people that offer their services on there also vary very wildly. I remember once being in an Uber and the lady who picked me up said she works with the UNDP and every time she goes into a new city when she wants to get to know the city she decides to go on Uber as a driver because she wants to experience the city from that perspective. So that is not the person that you are looking at protecting in this case. On the other side of things you have people who are making commissions for artwork online, online labour market platforms who are commissioning artwork and for something like that in terms of quality, in terms of it's very subjective I can look at a picture of an orange and say I am willing to pay two million dollars for it you would think me foolish. And so these are interesting situations to add on top of that is the fact that when you look at an online labour market platform there is the online labour market but if you have an add-on on top of it for instance in this case of ride-hailing services you have a service delivery which has its own demand and supply side both with their issues and then the labour market service and so in as much as drivers have their issues that they seek redress for the customers who are also consuming their services have their issues with their seeking redress for again with their food it just came to mind when you were talking about goods damage sometimes there have been stories of people they have their food delivered and then their bites have been taken out of their food in that case and such issues are not things that necessarily you can regulate away but I think that coming back to your question on policy where we are and what are some of the things that we can do I do think that people are willing to pay or even if we want to squeeze sacrifice for value one fundamental issue that online labour market platforms have is the establishment of trust you know how do I know that you are who you say you are I was recently involved in some sort of recruitment assessment and where they were required to put a particular certificate someone had put their confirmation certificate for instance and so there are issues that have to do with being able to establish some sort of uniformity a basic level of service that okay if you say you are delivering this service then these are conditions that make up a framework that we can agree and I think that's where my colleague was talking about requiring the workers to sort of unionize not necessarily in a union but come together and create some sort of framework because it's a trust-based system that guides them they sort of have ownership of that yes because it's a trust-based system and so if and I think that from the research findings that were presented yesterday you find situations where already because it's such a trust-based system reputation matters a lot and there are already some geographic locations that have been blacklisted on certain global labour markets and even when you are not outrightly blacklisted that if you set your location to a particular country it reduces how much you may be paid for a commission by a very significant amount and so these sort of structures that communities of workers of artisans et cetera come together to put together I think that's the right, the very right to a guiding framework to ensure that okay you know that if you employ let's say an artist from Ghana a vibrant art community so you sort of can expect XYZ an artisan of this nature XYZ and I think those are the issues that we need to look at addressing and if there's also additionally the issue of fraud and we mentioned the issue of data privacy because if I'm able to you know mine a lot of us are not that data savvy or if you go to Tiptoe Lane the number of laptops et cetera there shows you the access to people sensitive documents that you could get so I could get your degree, your ID and put myself, if I look if you have a huge beard if you have a huge beard and I do a few things a few changes yeah like well you know I lost a lot of weight or I gained a lot of weight so it's me you know that sort of thing and so if we are actually looking at ways of providing value that's okay this is what you are getting in exchange for what you're talking about the loss of flexibility the loss of autonomy if there's something in it for me I might be willing to have that conversation if not then the black market will continue to prosper and long may it thrive but I wanted to also start off this leg and the floor is open if you have any questions please just put up your hand we'll bring a microphone to you to take any questions but while we wait for our first question from the audience I wanted to also get a sense of what your thoughts were with regard to the research findings you know what was found out and did any of it surprise you for example yes we found out that there's difference between Ghana and Kenya some of the indicators or the parameters quite apart from the geographical location yeah you could see difference between Kenya and Ghana so maybe at the end of the report we should find out the factors that account for those differences so we must know then we can make recommendations to close the gap between Ghana and Kenya indeed we are not too much different per some of the socioeconomic indicators so if on the digital platform online there's difference then we must be interested in that but also coming up with our attitude towards the online and the digital platform as she mentioned fraud, cybersecurity fraud, etc. the Sakawa and the rest have put a lot of people negative attitude towards it so we need to do a lot of work so that we can overcome that challenge and that's where policies, regulation the associations that she mentioned networking, building capacity of operators so that they can respond to the emerging opportunities and also risk that go along with the industry so what about you, did you where any of the findings at least from the conversations that have been had so far anything that stuck out for you before I come to Dr. Dames you are not, okay so Doc you can have mine so I wouldn't say anything that surprised me from yesterday because I was involved in the research so I've had the opportunity to sit with it for a bit, I wouldn't say something that surprised but I think one takeaway that I came away with from the research and that I think that it's something that we can all think through is the concept of incorporating some of these protections into the very design of platforms and also the nature of the working spaces so being able to at the point of building the skills so right from the capacity building right from the enabling tech ecosystem to be able to build these platforms and develop them etc having some of these social issues some of these protection issues some of these security issues being instilled so at incubators etc bringing the concept of fair work right at the beginning so that when you are thinking of building up your company your platform it becomes a part of the foundation it becomes a part of the conversation and the reason why I sort of latch on to that is that there's a lot of contextualization that sometimes needs to be done to make some of these concepts work you cannot do copy and paste so if we start thinking about it right from the beginning we are able to come up with a system that honors the principle of some of these requirements or some of these good to have without compromising or waiting for a situation where we are faced with sanctions or we have a situation where we have to do a copy and paste because we have not taken the pains to come up with indigenous solutions or indigenous systems that speak to the same protections without necessarily doing a copy and paste because you wait to the point where workers are being exploited there's a lot of abuse on platforms etc and then external parties are stepping in at that point you do not get to do that customization that would have made the system sustainable because that's the other thing it has to be a sustainable system otherwise it's not going to work that's interesting and Satis also moving not too far away from the research one of the things that also was highlighted was on the issue of poor connectivity and the lack of reliable digital infrastructure preventing workers access to markets one of the other ones was also the lack of participation you know unemployed but skilled people hesitant to apply for platform jobs I mean I don't understand that I mean the skill is there the platform is there there's evidence abandoned of how it works but then there's a hesitant in terms of wanting to latch onto it where is that from I think it's all about the trust issue this is an environment that is full of uncertainties you can be very sure that you're going to be successful or not because you may not be able to tell who is behind the tax that is being offered to you are you going to go through to the end or not so people even though they are so skilled they don't want to risk and then get shortchanged because this is an unregulated environment so you can't assuming you get through halfway and things go bad there's no law that you're going to apply to get whatever you have invested back it's an uncertain and chartered environment and people don't want typically people will not want to risk so let me go to more secured safety kind of through that kind of arrangement is the reason everybody wants to go into a formal employment whereas in fact if you take advantage of this you can make a lot of this but you see one of the things we also have very challenging is the attitude you must be very disciplined to work within this space I mean just take it during COVID-19 when most of us were working from home you expect that somebody should be online doing ABCD but the person is doing something else so most people will not be serious about it and that accounts for the delays it affects quality of the product and that eventually you may not be able to get what you want so we need to do a lot you see that's why the quality assurance which for instance the associations can guarantee is very key so that I know even though I'm dealing with you there's somebody in there who can call you to order then it will work but unfortunately in our everyday if you don't mind every day we have a lot of discrepancies against women and it seems to have at least from the little I've read with regards to findings it seems to have translated into the online gig economy as well how can we work around that especially from a policy point of view to ensure like Dami said earlier to ensure that it's part of the foundation of whatever we are building just to ensure that that discrepancy doesn't exist that discrimination doesn't exist in terms of women participation in that economy thank you first is addressing the skills gap that has been mentioned we should have access to knowledge and also information so that whatever that go along with this online they can be addressed the second issue that can also help is training and capacity building that is also key then also digital technology acceptance model in Ghana is very very low and I remember we are doing similar research for and we interviewed the youth who have completed university so we pose this question why are not many Ghanians interested in digital technologies and they said that most of us are laggards when it comes to technology acceptance that's what the students said so we asked them to come by this we are taught at the marketing class when we had our HND lecture and the fact we take long time to accept so it's one of the reasons to overcome that it means the communication, the training policy, regulation the association networking all will have to be scaled up so that we know that then the benefits must also be part of the capacity building because if I don't know what is in for me then I block my entry towards the technology or the platform so the benefits that go along with that must also be amplified for all of us to know that even apart from the former work that has its own benefits it's challenging. This also has opportunities that can also come on board. I was coming to you for those of you who are logged on online you can pose your questions on the Slido platform please do well to any question just swing it through the panel is ready to take the question so just get onto the Slido platform it's very very simple it's not already on it just put your question there we'll be more than happy to access the question so for those of you in the room as well who might have any questions that you would want addressed or looked at or for us to delve deeper into please just let me know just put up your hand wherever you are we'll bring the microphone over to you so we can address them and I can see one in the back there OK so I'll just quickly add on to his response to the last question the first one is that with regards to what you mentioned about skilled people who might not be getting onto the platform I think the goal would be to think that when you're thinking of skills it's a particular set of graphic design people who are but if you think about it even with the right hailing services there are quite a number of drivers who were previously driving traditional taxis or even churchos who have made that transition onto the right hailing platform now on the right hailing platform a lot of the communication is in English and a lot of the contracts are all in legalese I think we've come to accept a sign of our times that whenever you go on an app and it says terms and conditions have been updated scroll down hit OK and especially for a right hailing platform worker who if he does not click agree cannot work for that day they're not going to bother going to get someone can you explain it to me what has changed you know that sort of thing they are skilled because someone who has been driving for 20 years on the streets of Accra is a highly skilled driver but at that point in terms of being empowered to be able to effectively make use of the platform on which they are I think there's also that so it's not just that narrow scope of like someone who can read everything and understand it but there's that aspect and on the gender issue just a quick one so I think something that came up yesterday that was quite salient was the fact that even yes so online work is has positives for women and other care workers right in the sense that that flexibility allows you to be able and we saw it during COVID times that there were lots of women that spoke to how they were thriving in their careers because they had the flexibility to work when the baby was asleep etc but at the same time you realize that when you are doing online work the baby or whatever needs your attention does not go away because you bring your laptop out and so the same care and support system that are needed to support women being able to be effective in their work offline is also needed here and we need to address in addition to the skills gap etc that my colleague mentioned also need to address those so that they are able to be effective in their online labor. We had a question in the audience and so. My name is Ernest Ernest Abwaja from MDF of West Africa. I wasn't here yesterday to listen to the to the research or the presentation I think the online marketing or business have come to stay with some of the papers that I read more of the educated or people with bachelors or people with the shared education can be found in that space which is good and also is more or less other people use it as a top-up in terms of employment to get more wages. Don't make mention of the right hailing and you see they've built up a system where easily the consumers like myself could easily identify with challenges and then the provider can be held accountable. So for this large space and I also agree with the fact that there should be some of cooperatives so that most of these people can plug in. If there's any challenge if you are a consumer and I get anything online you can always more or less complain or find a way so that this particular person can be blacklisted or whatever it is. It's not there. So I just want to find out from the panel if they have as I said I wasn't here yesterday but if there's any policy that is coming up that is actually going to address the concerns of the consumers like myself who more or less patronize online products because it's not going anywhere now so I just want to find out if there's any steps that I've been taking to do that I'll be glad. Thank you. Yeah honestly I don't know of any policy that is in the pipeline the way we say to regulate this so that's why we looking at the other route of having these kind of cooperatives, associations that guarantee spots for the clients otherwise because you see it's an area that is quite difficult to regulate and so we still have to continue engaging but as the other panelist said we need to educate a lot more people to to imbibe into them so these ethics you know once we are able to have that then people should have their assurance but honestly it's quite difficult it's still a blanket sport is it that I wouldn't say it's complicated it's just a COVID that our attention is growing more on the gig economy before COVID few of us put much emphasis on that so I believe that this gathering and also the study report will make some recommendation towards regulation there are other gatherings and research work that are also ongoing so in no time I will spread that policy makers will come to a conclusion that we must regulate then the specific ministries can be taxed or SOEs others can be taxed to come out to regulation and you know for regulation it's an ongoing process an act can be passed the following year if there are some new opportunities or some gas it can be amended so it shouldn't be a problem regulating it at all so I think that the particular question was a reference to the right healing apps so while I do not know of any policy in the pipeline I do know that there is some engagement there are some engagements that are going on so for instance in one of the interactions that we had the online driver's union which is a cooperative of drivers who work within the right healing space they are working to engage governments on some of their concerns but this brings us back to and also I think for the labour market aspect of it I think the current labour act is old it's very old but for our comfort we learn that there is one in the works and so we can expect to see that and hopefully it's going to reflect a bit more of our times that's interesting we have a question in the back of the room and then we have another one in the front as well thank you very much my name is Stephen I saw someone who benefitted from online work when I was in university I believe there's not much awareness created about the gig economy because in Ghana when it comes to it's much louder when you see a lot of gadgets kind of on employment than people in the informal sector so I'm wondering if there will be a situation a mark in Ghana economy whereby people will say yes I'm using the gig economy as an alternative to formal employment and also it also boils down to the issue of trust that has been discussed so until the film work the policy aspect is being sorted gig economy is still going on right now the most popular part of the gig economy is even the catering services where people can start using the online platform to their kitchens they set up businesses from their kitchens and they are selling and all these things are ongoing particularly when it comes to university students because then when you target university students they kind of reach you realize a lot of university students are already tech savvy but until then when they get out of universities they are not looking at the gig economy as a source of employment they are still looking at the formal sector is it that we haven't come to accept that it is part of an area for employment or is it because there's not much awareness because then in Ghana once you get a lot of graduates crying there's no job then that's where the cry becomes loudest thank you very much that's a very interesting perspective I don't know if you have any thoughts on it so I think that one of the issues really is that when we speak of data when it comes to the gig work it's limited so a lot of the examples that Steven mentioned would not be captured by data so if you look at the data that was used for instance for the research sprint it looked at upwork you might be able to get information from those platforms like Fiverr, Upwork, maybe Uber but not necessarily directly through Uber but through an independent you know how it goes but for the entrepreneurs who are really doing well for themselves offline or outside the data spotlight we do not capture a lot of those so even a lot of the statistics regards to how much people are earning etc it comes with an asterisk because really the data is not being collected on some of these things and sometimes people do not want to report the data because I think the example he gave also brings us back to the question of quality control should you be able to sell food from your campus kitchen according to the current laws no because if we are talking about quality control and food safety the FBA comes in you need to have a segregated kitchen that will pass inspection for you to be able to produce food grade material like our food for people to consume to be able to sell it so those are some of the issues is that you essentially for some of the services that are delivered online we sort of have an unspoken gentleman's agreement where I trust you are not poisoning me because if I am ordering a cake from your campus kitchen I have no idea what's in there and I do not even have the comfort of the FDA to say okay I'm going to report you to the FDA if anything goes alright and that's why we see a lot of online complaints etc but yeah so that's the sort of trade off if we want to control some of the quality we will end up yeah so and but for food there's something that we have to do because for now we've not had big blowouts but imagine if someone had a contaminated kitchen we could see people lose their lives and then that's when regulators will have to step in and that goes back to what I was saying earlier if the regulator is stepping in after an adverse effect that's not when they will listen they are not going to listen then and so the time to engage to dialogue is now I mean that's a very incredible way of looking at it especially the food but none of you say it it makes me very scared but do we have any other questions in the room? Yeah so allow me to wear an activist hat on this on this matter is an African and because I hear a lot of regulation targeting the African platforms but there is a lot coming from layers of inequality passed across the platforms particularly I want to deal with the platforms that I imagine from the other countries and are serving us as Africans I want to know in the policy have you we've been thinking in terms of when these people enter our countries do we have basic regulatory framework of when they enter how are they supposed to protect our people because this gig economy is actually targeting an employed and when the target of an employed comes it comes with vulnerability these are very vulnerable people who are likely to fall for anything to survive and so I'm wondering for how long are we going to be wearing this savage hat that all let's allow them move around and give us jobs because we need the jobs and we keep a deaf ear to the fact that people are actually being exploited by the platforms and I'm talking about different kinds of platforms I would like to see governments doing something in that space so that before even we get to the worker and ethics of the worker and all that because some of these workers are actually products of platforms that are ROG so a ROG platform will produce a ROG worker that's my question to what extent is government concerned about the well-being and the welfare of someone who is potentially going to be or someone who is on a platform like that I don't know if I captured I know it's more nuanced than that I acknowledge that but for the purposes of the conversation to what extent have there been considerations around that the protection of the dignity for example and also of Ghanians I think every government is concerned about the protection of its citizens but as I said earlier just before and after COVID our attention on these things are coming up so gradually I think the policy makers will respond to that and we know we have data protection act that also requires a protest to go through them so I think that when the time comes they will respond but the time is here yeah I know it's that's what I said it's two years and I've said that we are a little bit slow in responding to issues so they will respond and as the doctor said that engagement on this way to put up an act of regulation it's not a simple thing you need to engage the first with us learn from other best practice get a space to put it together thereafter it goes to cabinet parliamentary consideration for parliament it is minimum of three times it takes time so we'll get there I'm sorry but I'm putting on my journalistic heart here like you said it's been two years COVID came went kind of came back again said hi killed a couple of people I mean it's been two years it was in the distance before the two years came in I mean everything from Uber to everything else in between was there before COVID so was there a consideration even before and even after the two years what were we doing in those two years in terms of understanding how the platforms work in terms of understanding whether there was dignified work even for the Ghanaian in terms of being compensated for everything within that period and why do we have to still hold on and hope because that's what it sounds like it sounds more like a hope situation than something that is imminent and to add on to what Philip is saying I fear that given the pace of technology because you in as much as we understand the process there's a process to developing an act that can take years etc but I fear that in terms of technology if we do not develop and come up with a more dynamic framework of dealing with some of these issues we will keep catching up to the detriment of the Ghanaian people if we are lucky enough to even catch up if we are lucky enough to even catch up because for instance if there's a complaint collective complaint and it's brought to the table of government and government now has to consult Uber Ghana and say what do you do can you bring us data that really helps us to understand what you do and which of our laws applies to you I'm not saying that's what happened I'm just putting my drama my drama enthusiast has had to sort of paint a scenario then Uber Ghana gets to drive and Uber no disclaimer like I'm not targeting Uber it's just the common one that we all know so it's just a place where there could be any other but at that point the dialogues are the points of the explain things to us help us understand bring us data and help us situate what you do within our law at the point where there's a complaint it's too late so there needs to be that more active more dynamic information trying to understand bringing them to the table so we've heard about you, you are here what are you doing and how are you making sure that people are even if you don't have a law that speaks directly to what they do so the Ghanaian people are very dear to us I'm really breaking this down to the basics and it's idealistic and the way I'm phrasing it might be a bit naive but I'm trying to drive whom paints as a picture of what is at stake and the kind of dynamics that are at play here that we need to defend because today it's ride hailing apps with AI, machine learning, who knows where the technology would be if we are dealing with deepfakes and there's some sort of online platform that is dealing with that if government is caught on our way and has to catch up like Phillip is saying we will not catch up and so I think this would be and treating and this is not just the labour policy or ministry but in general governments I think that we have a digital Ghana agenda there's a lot of support for digitalization but technology is very and we really need to have more dynamic policy frameworks for dealing with some of these issues that come up so Phillip may I print before I give you the microphone put one question we got from Slido from the online crowd to be fair about this so talking about gender we have this today there is one question the lack of participation of women in the non-traditional sectors has to do with the mindset is there any initiative in Ghana to support women gig workers is there anything that you know from the research so I know that the number of incubators etc and also some of the development partners so for instance there's e-skills for girls there are initiatives that are being a bit intentional in ensuring that when they have opportunities to re-skill upskill etc to close their skills gap they have that more intentional targeting of women now to speak to the issue of socio-cultural sort of restraint even in those intentional targets and we sometimes run into that same situation where you see a call out and they are looking for 20 female entrepreneurs to XYZ and the same call you see it takes months later because they run the call and they did not even get 10 people to apply and so there's still a lot to be done by way of sensitization by way of awareness creation by way of empowerment to get women to be more involved in the informal if there are women in the informal sector women dominate over there but in terms of bringing them in online digital platforms etc there's quite a bit of expertise just to add that for us as DPs we go in for a more targeted approach to you 30 women are being trained with support from the ILO the traditional archaic trust and we feel that it is very important for them to be able to acquire these skills to reach out to people using all these platforms so that they can improve upon their lot and also that is at that level but the broad framework is what we don't have and it's creating a problem now but you know let's leave it let's not get into that we have a couple of questions in the room as well there's some in the front here I think I have three in the front and then I have one in the back so we'll do one in the back and then the three in the front and we'll wrap it up good afternoon ladies and gentlemen so my name is Prince I happen to present the National Online Drivers Association formerly Ghana Online Drivers Association and I think this is a quite pressing issue regarding regulations and I remember I think Augustina said something about what I said later in my submissions on Friday I think we live in a country where a lot of the things that we do is not really sync so we have different departments and different ministries that have data and some do not have data of what's really happening on the ground for instance concerning regulatory issues we've been trying to engage a lot of the organizations or associations from the government perspective on how best they can help we as an organization to counter attack certain issues regarding right hailing services to some extent there hasn't been any sort of result and the problem is the governments themselves also are much more focused on revenue mobilization than certain structures that would care them to also get to that extent where in the later part they get to mobilize revenue so when you try to meet the government they are rather thinking of how best they can task we the drivers because now I can boldly say now they don't have any mechanism on how to manage online drivers mainly because the traditional taxi drivers as we all know normally get registered through the municipal assemblies and all that they have an obligation to pay quarter driver's license and all these things where if you don't pay the city drivers city would stop you from operating but from the perspective of online drivers it's totally different the government doesn't even know how many drivers are online they are basically providing services also because I believe that we don't have the system to also monitor some of these things and you know these foreign companies as well have this sort of data protection policy they would come up with so many clauses as to why they can't release data to you as well in terms of being a government so I believe that the core issue is if the government is ready we are also ever ready to make sure it works because we need you and then you need us we're ever ready I mean there are a lot of issues if we should talk about them here I'm sure we may not close today and thank you for the insight and the commentary as well really appreciate you joining us we have few more questions and we'll wrap it up but then while we know the lady in the frontier we'll have a little presentation yes but please note that we have a little feedback form for all of you directly after the session it's at the the table where you registered would really you know please with you to fill it out before you take leave of us yes please thank you so my name is Hilda Barra I work with the Tony Blair Institute and I work with the Department of Businesses on the report itself I'm curious to know if the report offers any sort of recommendations policy recommendations on how you can balance power between the digital labour platforms and the users because I think to some extent as a consumer of the platform it could be compensated whether it's through credits or anything but on the other hand I think that there is a discrepancy in the kind of power a user would have on the platform so you could be blacklisted whether it's from decreased ratings it could be kicked off the platform a bit trially how are they is there an attempt to address how you can balance power between the service providers and that kind of respect and then the other question that I have regarding the research that was done is has a typology of labour platforms been created for Ghana so looking at the impact of digital labour platforms on future skills so you have at the top of it if you think of Mazla's hierarchy of needs you have highly specialised talent that would exist at the top and at the bottom you have a dodge of I think differentiated talent at the bottom so anybody could sign up for Rideshare for example so if you think of that kind of typology have the policy gaps been identified based on the classification of talent required and skills of the labour platforms and is there any thinking going into the impact on education in the future what does this mean for the skills that Ghana needs to really invest in especially when you're thinking of a more globalised world where platforms would be would present sort of like the opportunity for the bulk of Africa's youth so I'm sort of like extrapolated the question slightly beyond the question. Absolutely, well thank you. Any thoughts on anything from the research that potentially helps? Just for us we'll be working with the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations to actually see how we can have the platform for collecting data on labour market information and we feel that it's important that we support. Now in terms of the skill gap analysis Commission for TV for instance has commissioned Price Waterhouse and Coopers to conduct a research so there's a report on but here we are looking at sectoral approach we're trying to not go at it broadly but look at specific sectors and see which gaps exist there in terms of skills so that we have some reports and as we've been working with the sectoral councils or sectoral body they call it to develop skill strategies and before we develop the skill strategy we identify the gaps and make recommendations so some of these reports are available, some have been published I know we published for agricultural sector published for construction, tourism and hospitality, ICT, oil and gas the others are in the process you know so eventually we'll have this but we'll be working with the Ministers of Employment and Labour Relations to establish a system, I know there's the World Bank support also to help them have a robust a robust labour market information system and structure that will help us have the data now and also anti-space skills for the future thank you and just to add as much as I helped on government earlier I put my research on it's quite a big feat you know that it has to tackle when it comes to this particular space if you're looking at where the influence should start you mentioned education so right from GES if we want to go all the way there's some targets and interventions to be done right from the very basic levels all throughout and there's ways in which it touches the entire education value change and so from the research there are some policy recommendations that were made and one of the points of yesterday's interaction was to ensure that you had the opportunity to listen to stakeholders that were present to sort of try and pass out some sort of prioritisation because there is a lot to be done now on digital permutability of activity within the economy and therefore governance and so there would be a lot to be done in there's been a lot of ad hoc policies being developed to regulate or supervise the spaces which digital touch first there are some learnings from there that governments can leverage to see how best can come up with more uniform or common policies that protects the people not necessarily from okay I'm putting all of you into this box and regulating you but sort of principles that then all the policies that have been reviewed for this year or in the pipeline et cetera these principles then guide the updates of these policies and can help to patch up and also think because now we still have quite a bit of siloed policies because of the way digitalisation developed in Ghana but think some of the initiators think some of the efforts of development partners et cetera to make sure we get the most out of the efforts and the resources that are turned Was there anything you wanted to add? I want to encourage key operators to show positive attitude towards the online labour market system with respect to my friend who represents the online drivers association you now have a trade or a vocation that you have accepted to go along with so we encourage you to do everything best so that you don't fall aside of the emerging technology that is found in this space so you need to support yourselves in terms of training networking then also reaching out to GPs reaching out to the government policy makers, researchers so that you can also develop the industry that you find yourself in if we always wait for someone to take the next action the time that we realize we might be a little bit late so each of us has a specific role that you can play so he can take it bigger and even move beyond Accra and cover other areas that online drivers are also found I hope that you take this in good fit thank you Interesting, we have two more questions before we wrap up we have two questions in the front and then we will wrap it up for the session My name is Michael I just wanted to bring to the fore that there are three key actors within this whole space one is the labour side where we are creating labour so basically a lot more people are recruited and if you look at especially what is online that continuously and growingly there are a lot of people moving online and creating that environment there is also the side of the users that we have to look at I think we've had a lot of discussions on it ensuring that whatever that is being given out there or the services that is being provided I remember there was this thing on social media where for instance in the fashion industry somebody gets the dress that he is wearing and gives it out what comes out is a different thing and you would have paid for it already and there is also the thing where you see something nice on an online platform outside the country and then you think it's caught in, it's this and then it comes back and it's nylon and you can do anything with it so there is also that side of it and there is a tech side which I think that we should also be more concerned about individuals that are actually creating the business online that is to say that for instance I am within the environment of research and also capacity building and you go into organizations where they say that they are recruiting some type of labor online and basically the quality of that it's extremely poor you have somebody who says I'm a digital marketer they say let me see your profile let me see your Facebook handle your Instagram handle let me see your LinkedIn handle and you ask that question really what are you coming to do for me if that's what or what are you going to do so there are three groups and they are actually all struggling to find their space one caution I would want to put out there is when we talk regulation once you talk regulation then you have the challenge that the online drivers are having because regulation means that you must register your business registering your business means taxes they get to know you they get to identify you and if you build any business before here in Ghana you really don't want the government anywhere closer to you you wish that nobody knows that you exist and we've had tremendous huge businesses I have one lady that you know worked for me and moved to the business like started something online with fashion like beauty and now her business is better than mine and she didn't have need any capital no registration and all those things and she has over 20 workers now and she's a very young lady once we bring regulation and regulation also comes and the thing is that who are those who are going to develop these laws for us these researchers and then technocrats who might not have those businesses and therefore might not have been able to go through what it takes to get there and even if you look at the formal environment the formal entrepreneurship environment that's the biggest problem they have with the the laws and the regulators and the taxes and all those things so it might be dead on arrival if we don't take care when we are looking at the environment of regulation however there have been key points that have been raised when I see the repeatedly especially Frank talking about framework and then Doc also talking about framework let's now start discussing framework how do we get it done within an environment without necessarily looking at government we shouldn't look at it too much because the point is that when you do that you kill it on arrival a lot of people will not go into that place will not be able to to you know I was training some people for a Ghana Enterprises Agency we wanted to register their businesses just sito like they are producing food as you say and Ghana Enterprises wants to register free for them now you know the funny thing to get FDA to register they are ready to pay for it free so just come and register but it means that they ought to register their business and it means they must get thin and just thin and registration of business you will don't like your registration let our food not be you know I don't know if you understand so then you get to them prevent people from from entering into this environment that is creating a lot of opportunities for the youth so let's look at it from those three angles I'm sure once the discussion is ongoing we should be able to place it in a good place but I would go for a framework every day over the loss the no regulation so this is the final comment really quick and then we can wrap it up but I can assure you that the food and drinks we are going to enjoy after this session is regulated so no worries about that a very final comment and we wrap it up for today so my name is Fred Abban I'm the IT Director for the Youth Employment Agency and I would also want to talk about regulations I will differ a little from the gentleman the last book the ecosystem in which we are evolves very fast and a monster has been born now if we don't tame this monster this monster is going to grow to become something that we will not be able to contain in our country let me give you one example between the mid 90s and late 90s cell phones started coming in Tugana at a very fast pace now same numbers were not registered you could buy a SIM card and start using and it got to a point somewhere last year also the government started saying if you register all SIM cards a report has just been released by one of the telcos that 6 million of your subscribers that have subscribed to what they call quick loan have refused to register with their Ghana cards and so that money they were hoping to retrieve they just can't find the owners of those SIM cards that are somehow missing in action now let us come to our ecosystem where we are discussing at time I come something like what the lady talked about food poisoning might happen it might happen on a very large scale and we might not even be able to find whoever was behind our food business it might be chemicals for hair it might destroy some faces maybe make up or something like that regulation does not necessarily mean people are going to pay huge sums to the state it depends on the content of the regulation if we do not regulate our space right now a time will come let's see if our friends are invited to say we might meet here again and the question might be a different question altogether so framework or regulation let us look at it critically and let us do this now if not we might meet here and discuss it from a different angle some days to come thank you well thank you very much I wish we could continue so I would just take final wrapping up comments two minutes each and then we would head on to the regulated food yeah just to say that what we are talking about has come to stay so earlier we try to find a framework to guide how we operate within the space the better for us thank you thank you very much okay yeah so I think that again like I mentioned with the food poisoning example regulation has this time and space and should be effective etc I would not beat on that so much but I do think that regulation has to be intentional and fit for purpose etc and putting in regulations that you do not have the resources will power etc to enforce will not achieve much and with regards to that I would say that when you look at industry associations cooperatives etc and with the Ghana Chamber of Technology we have a great role to play over there because some of the conversations about self-regulation of developing and establishing a guiding framework even helps and feeds into regulation to help the regulation not start from scratch but start from sometimes level of understanding of industry so that the regulation can be effective both to support the industry that is seeks to regulate if it should come to that mind you online labour market will not just be one thing that you are regulating because like we discussed right here in this room it spawns such a wide berth of services but that it would be effective in its way because learning from industry listening to the various concerns and it is able to balance the interest at hand I mean it was nice that you did not stray too much Thank you I would suggest that each one has to play to build up this new emerging industry so let us observe what is happening in other parts of the world in terms of regulation in terms of policy in terms of institutional collaboration support and also role and responsibilities of key operators so that we can have a better suited online labour market system that is fit for purpose and also respond to our needs and also our expectation Thank you so much ladies and gentlemen please put your hands together for our panelist Dr Augustino Dami CEO of the Ghana Chamber of Technology and Frank Kwesi Adeto national project coordinator scale up Ghana ILO and Dr. Theofilus Adomakon Director Consultancy Management Development Initiative Thank you so much gentlemen and ladies for that insight. I do hope this conversation has been beneficial to you personally I know that I have an awesome show this evening that I'm going to play on radio Thank you guys so much and thank you all for your questions as well. Like I said we have drinks and something to munch on outside we also have some feedback forms that would really need you to fill out for us before you take leave Before we go I would just like to say a big thank you to the Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society the Digital Transformation Center Ghana and also the Gig Economy flagship at the GIZ. Thank you guys so much for putting this conversation together and I mean the next step obviously is further conversations for us to get to the point where there can be consideration for those who are skilled and require the work and then also the level of the regulation that we need to consider. Thank you all so much and have a wonderful rest of the day Thank you