Ursula Owusu Commissions ICT Labs and Cell Phone Towers

The Minister for Communications and Digitalisation, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful has commissioned four ICT Labs in the Assin North, South, and Central municipalities.

The ICT Labs form a part of projects under the Ghana Investment Fund for Electronic Communications, (GIFEC), which help provide opportunities and facilities to bridge the digital gap in the country.

Specifically, GIFEC has a Cyberlab project which seeks to equip 1000 selected institutions of learning in deprived communities with computers and related accessories and Internet connectivity.

Some beneficiary institutions in Assin commissioned by the Minister during the August 23rd tour are Obiri Yeboah SHS, Atonsu M/A Basic School, and Assinman Nursing Training College.

The new Administrator of GIFEC, Mr Prince Ofosu Sefah, said his outfit was putting the necessary measures in place to assist educational institutions, especially those in under-served communities.

Mr Ofosu Sefah also revealed that so far over 182,000 people have benefited from another GIFEC program – Coding for Kids.

The program helps children learn programming in a fun and interactive way.

Mr Sefah was full of praise for the work done till now by GIFEC staff, specifically mentioning the immediate past Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Hon. Kofi Asante, who just retired from the Agency he led as CEO, twice

A flagship program of GIFEC which also featured on the Minister’s tour was the Rural Telephony Project (RTP), which is aimed at facilitating the extension of coverage of mobile telephony services to areas whereby access to such services is not available at all or not adequately available, since existing licensed operators have
not yet extended coverage to those locations.

The scope of that project is to connect 2,016 sites in Phase I and another 2,016 sites in Phase II, to benefit about 6.8 million people across the country.

The Bediadua RTP site commissioned by the Minister on August 23rd is an example of such a beneficiary community and site.

Indeed, the Honourable Minister mentioned that in Phase I alone, Assinman is penned in to get 38 such sites, with 3 now built and connected and the rest to be built and activated shortly.

Hon. Ursula Owusu-Ekuful also visited a Community Information Centre (CIC) in Assin Foso, as part of the tour.

CICs exist as community resource centres, to provide ICT services to the general public, toward the achievement of the government’s digitalization agenda.

To this end, a total of 243 CICs have been built out of which 112 are currently operational. An additional thirty (30) strategically located CICs are also currently under construction.

The Administrator of GIFEC – Mr Sefah emphasized the determination of the Fund to be innovative and conscientious in deploying the smartest and most cost-effective systems, following up on and maintaining them for the good use of Assinman and Ghanaians, in general.

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