Samoa hosted its first-ever Digital Week on Monday and focused on the promotion of responsible technology use in education while fostering the development of digital skills for students, teachers, and parents.

Convened at the TATTE conference center in Sogi, the celebration of the event coincided with Global ICT for Girls this year with the official opening guided by the theme "Digital Skills for Life".

Samoa Information Technology Association (S.I.T.A.) President Leota Sarai Faleupolu Tevita, who gave one of the keynote addresses, said with Samoa moving into the digital world with the rest of the globe it is important that everyone from children to elders are aware of various challenges such as cyber-attacks.

"Learning digital skills is not something you learn or capture overnight. It takes you years so if you don't capture it wisely, you will never get satisfied or happy," President Leota said.

"ICT is one of the most paramount areas in the education sector plan 2019-2024 and the NUS, MESC, and SQA are working to try to integrate Digital Literacy and ICT in the curriculum from primary and secondary levels to tertiary level.

"This is the pull of knowledge that comes out of the education and goes into the field to build our country."

The Digital Week aims at developing and disseminating innovative approaches to ensure that digital skills for life are safe and protected. As much as Samoa embraces newly established initiatives through digital means, it has not been held back by increasing challenges facing the influx of technology in this day and age.

One of these challenges is the impact of technology on young girls hence the need to address it by exploring those digital skills. Selected schools are invited to attend the week-long program.

MCIT is privileged to be working in partnership with Girl Geek Academy from Australia where students will have the opportunity to learn and develop coding skills and code. In its recently approved ICT Sector Plan 2022-2027, this initiative is one of the sector’s visions to implement its digital transformation initiative.

The Digital Week activities focus on enhancing digital skills, education, and competencies for digital transformation. This goes to show the need of empowering all citizens with the digital tools and skills to instill interest in women and girls to pursue studies and careers in the most critical study disciplines in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM).

Leota – who is currently the Chair for the Pacific Islands Chapter of the Internet Society 2023 – delivered the keynote address for the inaugural Digital Week opening while delivering remarks on behalf of the Government's C.E.O. Lefaoali’i Unutoa Auelua-Fonoti.

To ensure the success of working in synergy, the Office of the Regulator will co-host the fourth day of the weeklong program to conclude the Digital Week and Girls in ICT initiative.

The Australian High Commissioner to Samoa, Emily Luck was amongst the guests and IT specialists who marked the digital week.