Secretary-General of the Common Telecommunications Union (CTO), Shola
Taylor said he is highly impressed with the collaboration between the public
and private sector organization that constituted the Ghana delegation to the
ongoing ITU Telecom World Conference in Busan, South Korea.
Ghana's delegation, led by Deputy Communications Minister Nenyi George
Kojo Andah, comprised of five public sector institutions, two private sector
institutions and one public-private partnership.
Those from the public sector include the MOC itself, National
Communications Authority (NCA), Ghana Investment Fund for Electronic
Communication (GIFEC), National Information Technology Agency (NITA) and the
Bank of Ghana (BoG).
Those on the private sector side include Subah Info Solutions, Wireless
Application Service Provider’s Association of Ghana (WASPAG), and the sole PPP
was GCNet.
Speaking to Adom News on Ghana Day at the ITU World, Shola Taylor said
that was the kind of collaboration African countries need to drive their ICT
agendas because "by the very nature of ICT, even little disruptive
technologies by some significant tech startup can be revolutionary so it is
important for governments to work in close collaboration with private sector in
ICTs."
He therefore urged other African government to emulate Ghana's example
and not isolate state institutions from private institutions at such events and
in their march towards national development through ICT.
Shola Taylor said it is time for African governments to start pursuing
vigorous local content policies that seek to place ICT and telecoms in the
hands of local people who would be committed to develop products and services
relevant to Africans on the back of modern technology.
Indeed, an example was Google Map, which mainly seek to direct tourists
to tourist destination as compared to the Subah Ghana Advent GIS primarily
designed to help local government authorities mobilize revenue more
effectively, with the tourists guide feature being a side benefit.
"There is no better way to undertake this digital transformation
journey without significantly involving local tech business in the mainstream
ICT and telecoms industries and not on the peripheries," he said.
Shola Taylor noted that here again, Ghana's example with empowering
locals to own media houses has yielded result for the country in terms of how
media houses collate election results professionally and announce them ahead of
the official result from the electoral commission.
"I believe that helps to safeguard Ghana's democracy unlike in
other countries where such local empowerment does not exist and for that a
whole election results had not be cancelled over disputes," he said.
The CTO boss is also urging African countries to embrace the drive
towards smart cities, Internet of things, Artificial intelligence,
virtualization, 5G and the entire spectrum of technologies that form the
bedrock of digital transformation.
He said in the same way Africans embrace new cars when they arrive,
"there is need to also embrace the new technologies while we still grapple
with trying to provide most of deprived people with basic broadband
connectivity."
Minister
Meanwhile, Deputy Communications Minister George Andah said he was also
very impressed with the strong showing team Ghana put up at the ITU World,
particularly on Ghana Day.
Ghana Day afforded all of the institutions on the Ghana delegation the
opportunity to pitch their solutions and answer questions from possible
investors and countries which are interested in learning from Ghana.
The space at the Ghana stand was packed to capacity and the audience
included some top dignitaries such was CTO boss Shola Taylor, African
Telecommunications Union Secretary General Abdoulkarim Sumaila and the Director
of Radio Communications Bureau of ITU, Francois Rancy.
The audience, particularly, those from Sierra Leone, showed keen
interest in initiatives by Ghana's NCA, GIFEC, NITA and WASPAG. They were
particularly interested in GIFEC Boss Kofi Asante visiting them and doing a
presentation for them.
On Ghana Day, a delegation from Zimbabwe, led by their Minister for
Information Communication Technology, Postal and Courier Services, Supa C.
Mandiwanzira paid a curtesy call on the Deputy Minister of Communication
specifically to learn about mobile money.
Meanwhile, George Andah said Ghana is taking away a feel-good factor
from the ITU World 2017 because from the discussions and responses so far, it
is clear Ghana is on the right path so "it is happy days in Ghana."
He said he was confident that based on the strong impression team Ghana
made, and the several enquiries that came in, there will be follow ups that
will lead to concrete working relationship for the benefit of the country.
The Deputy Minister also noted that in terms of local content in ICTs
and in general, government is fully committed to it and has started taking
steps to rope in local innovation in delivering the digital Ghana agenda, dubbed
"digi-time".
"Government is not shy of embracing smart technologies to deliver
on its ambitious but non-negotiable e-transform agenda and we are pursuing it
vigorous with our local partners fully onboard," he said.
Indeed, the national ID card project, digital street address system, and
the digital terrestrial television project are underway with deadlines on when
they are expected to fully come on stream. The DTT migration for instance, 42
sites have have been completed and the migration is expected to be fully done
by second quarter of next year.
Ghana Post
He also noted that steps are underway to completely revamp the
operations of Ghana post so that it can be more relevant.
The Deputy Minister explained that the pillars of growth of new Ghana Post
strategy are financial services, ecommerce and digitization, adding that the
implementation of the national digital property addressing system will make it
easier for home deliveries.
"We need to transform Ghana Post and turn it into a success story -Ghana
Post website will become a marketplace for vendors and consumers and home
delivery will be the central delivery arm of our business," he said.
George Andah said the ecommerce services of Ghana Post is due to be
launched by the end of this year.
Telecom/Broadband policies
Some industry players have recently been calling for new telecoms and
broadband policies because the key targets in the current ones have long been
exceeded, and those policies don't also address some industry developments like
broadband wireless access players, industry partnerships, wireless applications
services and others.
Indeed, the policy targets in terms of mobile voice penetration, mobile
broadband penetration among others have been far exceeded and now there are
partnerships happening and even more cross-breed forms of partnerships between
BWAs and MNOs are being discussed even though the current policy did not make
provision for that.
To that, Deputy Minister George Andah said "policies are dynamic
and may be reviewed from time to time. For example because of DTT we need to
review our broadcasting Act and policy."
Again, recently, the Minister of
Communications, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful herself charged the Broadband
Communications Chamber to initiate public discussions on what necessary reviews
need to be done to the policies to make them more relevant to the times.
CTO Boss Shola Taylor (middle) with Dep. Comms Minister George Andah and Chief Dir. of Comms Ministry Issah Yahaya
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