Minister of Communications, Ursula Owusu Ekuful has extended an invitation to the International Telecommunication Union, (ITU) to use Ghana’s digital facilities as centres of excellence in training and capacity building for the sub-region since the country has made progress in its digital transformation.
 
Speaking at the ongoing 2018 plenipotentiary conference of the international telecommunication union in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, the Minister said Ghana looks forward to increased partnerships as well as an investment towards bridging the global digital divide.
 
“Through the assistance of the ITU, we have operationalized the conformance and interoperability laboratories for type approval in Ghana and have extended an invitation to the ITU to utilize these 4 laboratories. 

Ghana is making every effort to provide a safe environment for digital participation through the establishment of Computer Incident Response Teams both at the national and sectoral levels, including CERTs for the financial and telecommunications sectors and established a National Cyber Security Centre,” she told the participants.

According to her, Ghana also provided assistive technology enabled devices to the vision impaired undergraduates to facilitate their computer literacy and education and aimed to extend that facility to all schools for the blind in the country.

“We will leave no one behind in our quest to narrow the digital divide and are using our universal access fund in partnership with the private sector to extend connectivity to the rural, unserved and underserved communities” she concludes.

She hinted that recognizing the importance of digital equity, the Government of Ghana is taking further steps to bridge the digital divide by introducing initiatives aimed at supporting and empowering the citizenry to embrace the use of ICT.

Ghana has aligned its developmental goals within the ICT sector to the five key goals of the ITU strategic plan proposed for 2020 to 2023.