West Gonja gets two rural telephony facilities

The minister for communications and digitilisation, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, has commissioned two rural telephony facilities at Mognori and Sunpini in the West Gonja Municipality of the Savannah Region on Saturday 6 May.

This is in fulfilment of the government’s intervention to extend basic telephone voice and data connectivity to every part of the country under the Ghana Rural Telephony and Digital Inclusion Project.

The minister also inspected two telephony facilities at Murugu and Langantere in the municipality.

The nationwide digital infrastructure, when fully completed, will provide voice and 3G data access to 2,016 communities.

The development of the cell sites will serve as an example of the collaboration between the government and private sector to advance digitisation in Ghana.

At a commissioning ceremony in Sunpini, Owusu-Ekuful urged the community to take advantage of the project to maximise its economic gains.

Inclusive exercise

She reiterated the government’s commitment to leave no one behind. She said, “We are determined to leave no one behind. Robust connectivity is at the heart of all the digital initiatives we are trying to roll out. Without connectivity you cannot do anything at all.”

“We are determined to build a robust rural network which will connect all our unserved and underserved communities with high-speed voice and data services.”

The minister said that 1,010 cell sites out of the 2,016 have been completed and connected.

“We will ensure that by the end of this year, all the 2,016 are built and connected for about four million to five million Ghanaians who don’t have access to the internet to also utilise data and high-speed voice services for all their online interactions,” she said.

The government has partnered with network operators in the country to build the infrastructure. This way, the operators can use it to deliver services to customers in remote communities where it is not economically viable to extend connectivity.

The chief executive officer of the Ghana Investment Fund for Electronic Communications (GIFEC), Prince Ofosu Sefah, in his address, noted that his outfit will do its best to mobilise resources to ensure that underserved and rural communities are connected to the digital world.

The project is being implemented by GIFEC, under the auspices of the Ministry of Communications and Digitalisation.

Reporting by Tahiru Abdul-Washiru in the Savannah Region

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