Life without technology will be very difficult – Ursula

The Minister of Communications, Mrs. Ursula Owusu Ekuful has cut the sod for the construction of 30 new Community ICT Centres (CICs) across the country.

The CICs project is a key initiative of the Ghana Investment Fund for Electronic Communications (GIFEC), and seeks to provide access to ICT services in communities without such facilities.

The project to be completed in six months, will also see 100 existing CICs renovated and equipped with upgraded computers and other equipment.

Mrs. Ekuful, who performed the sod-cutting ceremony at Akyem Asuom in the Eastern region on Tuesday, June 2, 2020, on behalf of President Akufo-Addo, expressed joy at what she said was the opportunity to bring the underserved and unserved communities aboard the technology train.

Beneficiary communities include Dambai, Kadjebi, Jasikan, Bunknpurungu, Kpandai, Akuma, Gyadam and Kokofu.

Mrs. Ekuful said never in mankind’s modern history had the relevance of technology to everyday life been so marked as it was presently, adding that life could no longer be lived normally without reliance on technology.

Covid-19 lessons

She observed that “We live in very unusual times which have taught us that without technology, it will be very difficult for us to have a fairly normal life, as this corona virus persists throughout the world and forces us to live at a safe distance from each other. For the first time in our living memory, we've been forced to greet Nananom and ourselves without handshakes, our children need to study remotely, we need to have virtual meetings and talking to loved ones on phone or by sending messages is the only way to keep in touch among others.”

According to the Communications Minister, the period of the coronavirus pandemic had clearly demonstrated that Information and Communications Technology (ICT) was vital to keep everybody safely connected today.

“The whole world was caught unawares with the scale and intensity of this pandemic which has brought our inadequate digital infrastructure into sharp focus. Ghana is better than most in our region but we still do not have the robust and adequate ICT infrastructure that can provide us with the tools we need to live and work remotely”, she said, and listed a number of ICT interventions and expansion programmes the government, through the ministry and GIFEC, had provided to aide Ghana’s covid response.

Government Interventions

These she said, included facilitating the establishment and management of the Emergency Call Centre (112) and the National Information Contact Centre (311), the Emergency Communication System and the Covid-19 symptom tracker App(*769#) to facilitate contact tracing and quarantine monitoring, assisting telcos to zero rate all health and educational sites and provide daily covid alerts to all subscribers free of charge.

Other interventions included providing all public sector workers with tools to facilitate remote working through the Smart Workplace platform which she said had connected over 200 MDAs and provided them with virtual office functionalities, and giving Telcos free spectrum for 3 months to ease congestion on their networks.

Mrs. Ekuful explained that the CICs were all equipped with computers and internet service, and were playing a very important role as learning centres for pupils and students during the period when schools were closed.  She said the youth could keep up with their academic work and access various e-Learning tools and platforms from the CICs even if they did not have internet at home.

“These CICs also double as community resource centres to provide business services and community development information within remote communities. They also serve as connectivity hubs for Ministries, Departments and Agencies, health facilities, educational institutions and, even online businesses to utilize for their work. These agencies will be required to pay a small fee to cover the operational expenses of the CICs”, she said.

Bridging digital divide

The Administrator of GIFEC, Abraham Kofi Asante, said the need for ICT inclusiveness in our world could not be overemphasized, explaining that it was for that purpose that GIFEC was set up in 2004 to facilitate the provision of universal access to ICT to all persons for socio-economic development.

He said since its establishment, GIFEC had implemented several innovations to achieve its mandate, explaining that the digital divide was not just about connectivity, because people lacked the knowledge and skills they needed to succeed in a digital economy.

“Lack of skills is the greatest barrier to digital inclusion, especially for people living in unserved and underserved communities. It is worthy of mention that, the United Nations Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development calls for 60% of youths and adults to have a minimum proficiency in sustainable digital skills by 2025”, he said.

Mr. Asante said to achieve that goal, the Ministry of Communications through GIFEC started establishing the Community Information Centres to serve as digital transformation centres within communities to build the digital capacities of the populace.

“As at 2017, only 28 out of the existing of 241 Community ICT Centres were operational. We therefore embarked on a strategic turnaround programme that involves refurbishing and equipping the centres to make them fully functional and achieve the objective for which they were established”, he said.

Mr. Abraham Asante said the effort notwithstanding, there were many more communities that lacked such community ICT hubs and as such were lagging behind in their quest for digital knowledge and active participation in a digital society, hence the planned addition of 30 more fully equipped ICT centres to accelerate the uptake of digital technologies in the selected communities and boost the capacity of students, young entrepreneurs and SMEs to succeed.

See full list of 30 communities to benefit from the project: