President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has pledged to ensure that telecommunication and ICT facilities are spread to every part of the country.

He described as unacceptable the situation where basic telephony infrastructure was largely concentrated in major economic centres, despite the significant deployment of telecommunications services across Ghana.

To help change this, the government over the past 19 months, through deliberate policies was creating the right environment, to encourage private sector investment in the communications sector.

President Akufo-Addo said this when he inaugurated a rural telephony project, in Abenaso, in the Eastern Region.

The project would connect the Abenaso and the surrounding communities with ICT facilities and telecommunication services.

The town and 499 other rural communities would now enjoy “3G” coverage.

The rural telephony project is being rolled out by the National Communications Authority and Ghana Investment Fund for Electronic Communications (GIFEC), in partnership with MTN and Huawei Technologies Limited, and the President said, this was going to provide data and voice connectivity to 1,020, hitherto, un-served communities nationwide.

He added that by the end of 2018, a total of 200 telephony sites, serving 1,000 communities would have been completed.

“Such is the commitment of Government to ensuring the realization of today’s ceremony that taxes, such as VAT, customs duties and other import levies, were waived for the equipment brought into the country for the project,” he said.

Expanding telephony connectivity services to rural communities would help open up opportunities for the development of skills and knowledge, as well the growth of businesses and the local economy.

President Akufo-Addo expressed appreciation to the traditional authorities, for generously donating parcels of land for the project to take off.

 He encouraged the chiefs and people in the beneficiary communities of the Abenaso project to “utilize fully, the opportunities that this project will bring to them”.

“We would want to see this project bring about a positive impact on the lives of residents of this community and other beneficiary communities.”

For his part, Chief Executive Officer of MTN Ghana, Selorm Adadevoh said the project is part of their contribution to bridge the digital divide in Ghana by providing coverage for unserved and underserved rural communities.

He noted that, MTN operates with a vision "to lead the delivery of a bold digital world" thus is very elated about the completion of the project.

The MTN CEO revealed that, the second phase of the project involves 200 sites which are currently on various stages of completion and are scheduled to be fully operational before December, making a total of 300 new sites rolled out in 2018.

Mr. Adadevoh noted that, the project is an important milestone in MTN’s quest to provide fast and reliable mobile telephony connectivity in rural communities in Ghana.

"We are committed to ensuring that every Ghanaian enjoys the full benefit of the internet and emergence of digital technology" he added.