By: Godfred Amoaful
About 3.5 million Ghanaians in hard-to-reach communities are to be provided with telephony connectivity by the end of this year.
The Ghana Investment Fund for Electronic Communication (GIFEC) is the implementing agency facilitating this project in rural communities across the country.
It says the government has committed €155 million to this project since 2020 with the aim of providing a telephony network to the unserved and the underserved.
In an interview with GBC News, the Chief Executive of GIFEC, Eva Andoh Poku, during the Minister of Communications and Digitalisation Ursula Owusu-Akuful’s tour to basic schools ahead of the Girls-In-ICT regional competition, said two thousand, and 16 telephony sites are being targeted to be constructed to serve this purpose.
“To date, we have constructed 1,010 sites across the country, and we’ve connected 643 sites. We are looking forward to complete all 2,016 by the end of this year. So we are working tirelessly to ensure that we complete them by the end of September.”
GIFEC has a core mandate of providing telephony connectivity and ICT equipment across the country to support capacity building in the tech sector.
It has also been providing technical support for the Communication and Digitalisation Ministry to successfully implement the Girls in ICT initiative to bridge the digital divide.
Mrs Ursula Owusu-Akuful, in her day two visit to the basic schools, reiterated that her office will put in more effort to ensure that the girl child, even at the lowest level of education, benefits from the Girls-In-ICT initiative.
The Girls-In-ICT Ghana initiative has been in existence for the last four years. It has the mission of imparting ICT knowledge to 1,000 girls each year across all regions. Students from all districts in Greater Accra will take part in this year’s regional competition starting next week.
The best three to 100 students will be given cash prizes and personal computers.
