The St Louis Senior High School (SHS) in Kumasi has been crowned winner of the maiden edition of the National Cyber Champions Competition (NCCC).

The all-female second-cycle institution accrued 99.5 points to stay on top at the end of the keenly contested quiz involving 14 SHSs from across the country.

Aggrey Memorial SHS and Kpando SHS scored 98.16 and 97 points to place second and third positions, respectively.

The NCCC, an initiative of CyberGhana, is a hands-on and project-based Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) and cyber program that motivates students to learn advanced concepts while schooling at the high school level in a competitive environment.

Bright Edujih Kuleke, Programmes Coordinator of CyberGhana, said the activity also intended to develop a cyber-security workforce among the youth in Ghana and Africa.

It is part of CyberGhana’s commitment to promoting cybersecurity engineering education and helping build Ghana’s pool of diverse talents from the high school level.

According to Bright Kuleke, organisations today face severe challenges in recruiting talents needed to protect emerging technology and critical systems from cyber security threats.

While shortages existed across the board, the greatest need was for professionals with deep technical training who could take on high-value roles including secure system design, tool development, and penetration testing.

Studies show nearly four million jobs are unfilled due to a shortage of cyber security talents.

Currently, several cyber security employees are found to need more fundamental knowledge, practical experience, and critical technical skills, he added.

Bright Kuleke noted that the current high school system did not have college-related programmes for students with high intelligence quotients to challenge them to learn advanced skills while schooling at the high school level.

It was, therefore, among other reasons the NCCC programme was developing cyber talents among high school students who were ready to learn advanced cyber skills.

The program puts teams of high school students in the position of newly hired cybersecurity professionals performing operation tasks in a small company.

In the rounds of competition, high school teams were given a set of virtual tools that represent a natural business environment, and the teams were tasked with carrying out real consulting projects.