Organisers of the 2025 Ghana Science and Tech Explorer Prize (GSTEP) Challenge aim to support the efforts by the government to address unemployment, particularly among young people in the country.

The organizers of the competition have assured that they will help guide the contending schools in developing business and technology skills to aid them in creating self-employment opportunities, thereby easing the burden on the government.

Their assurance comes following President John Mahama’s speech at his inaugural ceremony, outlining unemployment as one of the major problems to be tackled during his administration.

Speaking at the induction ceremony for the 2025 GSTEP Challenge semi-finalists, held at the Latter-day Saints Church in Tema, Gideon Mensah, the project manager at Shulem Lake, a partner of the contest, shared how he has been self-employed since university using his technological expertise.

“After I completed university, this is what I’ve been doing for over 10 years now. STEM is one sector that has a lot of opportunities. The ability to brainstorm and solve problems with ideas. Now I don’t use people’s services; I just do my stuff. When I relocated to a new place, I fixed my fan and other stuff I needed to fix,” he told Joy Prime.

He clarified that in Ghana, most people consider STEM kits to be toys, not realizing their relevance, explaining that such basic ideas and kits are used in the development of mobile phones and other electronic gadgets.

Similarly, he highlighted how children can help reduce spending within their families through STEM education.

“The child in the home can save his or her parents’ money. So if a socket is spoilt, the child understands what’s going on in the socket. The parents come, and he or she has tried to resolve the problem. Do you think the father would have to go and buy a socket? No, because he or she understands what’s going on and can even give recommendations as to whether a new socket will be required or not.”

Additionally, the government’s initiative of assigning STEM coordinators and giving them the privilege of training students is a way to create employment for people in the sector. He further mentioned that after acquiring knowledge on identifying problems and creating ideas to solve them, the children could apply these skills to invent equipment, such as drones, which could be sold to support the agriculture sector.

Shulem Lake provides all teams with STEM kits to assist in the creation of their various prototypes. As a result, Mr Mensah hopes to coach the teams to become better inventors.

Prince Oduro, one of the business coordinators for the competition, shed light on how to coach the students in navigating the business aspect of the training, enabling them to create employment for themselves at this stage and prepare for the future.

“The practical idea I’m bringing on board is for them to find out how the market works because being an inventor is different from being a businessman. There are people who are inventors but don’t know how to market their products. They don’t know how to meet the investors. So one way or the other, we’ll coach them on how to meet investors and how to sell their products to people in the market.”

The Practical Education Network Coordinator for the Challenge, Keziah Eyram Clad, who is responsible for selecting mentors and coaches, expressed that they have put in the effort to choose the best tech experts to train the contending teams.

“These coaches have great backgrounds in their various technical fields and the business mentors are actually running successful businesses by themselves. So we know that they can team up together and bring the teams to the stage we want them to be.”

The communications lead for the DreamOval Foundation, Jacqueline Johnson Quaye, who also spoke at the event, said the team has been thrilled by John Mahama’s priority to curb unemployment, as it is one of the goals of GSTEP.

“We were so happy when we heard the President’s speech because it’s in line with one of our key things when it comes to this challenge. During the challenge, we had a session called the business development framework and business model canvas; things that are related to business. We want the teams to understand that they can have the ideas and prototypes, but if they’re not able to make the business out of it by selling the prototypes they’ve created, then it’s almost coming back to the issue of having ideas, not being able to sell, and becoming unemployed.”

The organizers of GSTEP are well-equipped to ensure that all participating teams receive the necessary guidance to become "STEM-powered" business owners and self-employed.