"In the relative short period since the development of our national ICT vision, Ghana has witnessed appreciable growth in the ICT sector. Telephone subscription has hit the eight million mark, giving a telephone density of nearly 40 percent," said Aggrey-Ntim earlier this month at the ITU Africa Region Preparatory Meeting for the World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly (WTSA) in Accra.
The theme for the Accra meeting was "Bridging the ICT Standardization Gap in Developing Countries for the Africa Region."
Ghana is likely to exceed the telephone penetration target of the U.N.'s Millennium Development Goal targets for 2015 for telephone lines, cellular subscribers, personal computers in use and Internet users.
Fixed lines increased to 376,509 by the end of 2007, from 248,900 lines in 2001. During the same period mobile phone users rose from 215,000 in 2001 to 7.6 million, bringing the total for fixed and mobile subscribers up from 463,900 to 7,980,552 at the end of December 2007. Telephone penetration at the end of the period was 36.3 percent.
Mobile phone services cover all of the 10 regions in the country, Internet subscription is estimated at 1.5 million users, while broadband subscribers number just over 13,000.
At a two-day meeting dubbed "Connect Africa" held in Kigali, Rwanda, in November 2007, the ITU and the African Development Bank pledged to support Africa's connectivity by linking all capitals and major cities in the region with broadband infrastructure by 2012.
But Aggrey-Ntim is certain Ghana's progress in infrastructure development so far will speed efforts to complete its e-governance program and the establishment of community information centers in all the 230 political constituencies of the country.
The first phase of the country's fiber-optic development is complete and this is expected to facilitate the deployment of ICT applications nationwide. The national fiber-optic backbone would also help in the speedy implementation of the 20-year ICT4D (Information and Communication Technology for Development) policy plan developed in 2002 to guide the government's development program.
The priority areas of the nation's ICT4D policy include: Accelerated human resource development; promoting ICT in education; facilitating government administration; facilitating development of the private sector; modernization of agriculture; deployment and spread of ICT in the community; promotion of national health; rapid ICT physical infrastructure development; legal, regulatory and institutional framework and facilitating national security and law and order.
Funding has been one of the major factors hampering the speedy progress of ICT development plan but Aggrey-Ntim urged the private sector to complement government's efforts through investment in the sector.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Emily Aggrey
Quelle/Source: CIO, 16.06.2008
