The Minister for Communications and Digitalization, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, has reiterated Ghana’s commitment to the strategic plans of the Africa Telecommunications Union (ATU).
The Minister said this when she led a Ghanaian delegation to attend the 2022 Africa Telecommunication Union Conference of Plenipotentiaries (CLP-22) at Algiers, Algeria.
She said Ghana showed commitment to the ATU when it hosted and attended the Africa preparatory meetings for the World Telecommunications Standardization Assembly in 2020 (WTSA-20) and Africa Telecommunications Union (ATU) preparatory meetings for WTDC-21 as well as the International Telecommunications Satellite Organization’s (ITSO) General Assembly of Parties in 2022.
She added that the country sponsored at least three experts to participate in ITU study groups in all three sectors as well as ATU work groups.
Highlighting Ghana’s readiness for collaborations, Mrs Owusu-Ekuful noted that Ghana remained available to host and support ATU activities and events over the next four years.
“Indeed, we invite the Member States for internships, benchmarking visits and capacity building on our ITU collaborated programmes on cybersecurity, quality of service, conformity and interoperability assessment, spectrum management and monitoring, digital literacy skills development, innovation incubation and data market among many others.”
In addition to that, Mrs Owusu-Ekuful said Ghana has improved on the Girls-in-ICT and Rural Telephony and digital inclusion programmes as a further commitment to ATU strategic plan.
“This year, Ghana has connected over 2.3 million people and will extend coverage to 6 million unconnected rural populace by 2023 through our rural telephony and digital inclusion programme. We have expanded our annual Girls in ICT programme from 1000 girls to 5,000 basic school girls and another 5000 in secondary, and tertiary institutions,” she noted.
She, therefore, called for the support of African countries to Ghana’s candidature for re-election to the ITU Council and the election of Engineer Edmund Yirenkyi Fianko for Radio Regulations Board Region D at the ITU 2022 Plenipotentiary Conference which would take place in Bucharest in September-October this year.
Freda Dedzie, ISD
