Recent internet disruptions a blessing in disguise – Ursula

The Minister for Communications and Digitalization, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, has described the recent internet disruptions as a blessing in disguise for Ghana.

She explains that though it triggered widespread frustration among Ghanaians, it highlighted the need for the government to focus on providing the needed infrastructure to reduce possible disruptions in the telecommunications sector.

Mrs Owusu-Ekuful was speaking at the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Summit in Accra on Monday.

“So, I see what has happened in the past few days as a bit of a blessing in disguise to focus our attention on the need to invest even more in providing connectivity to all parts of the continent and our country, because it can help us leapfrog.

“We did that with banking when we didn’t put in place the normal banking infrastructure but moved towards mobile banking. We’ve done that in a few other areas. And we can use the digital infrastructure to transform the economies of the continent if we invest in putting them in place.”

“We’ve put in place a government connectivity network with the support of the World Bank, which is nationwide. We intend to layer on that and the infrastructure that we already have in place,” she stated.

Mrs Owusu-Ekuful also highlighted what the government needed to do in the short term to provide connectivity for Ghanaians.

“We need to look at resilient infrastructure. We need to look at climate-friendly infrastructure. We need to look at more scalable systems being put in place, and we need to look at working even closer together with the private sector. These are all takeaways that we have from this. We’re doing it, but we need to scale up our effort,” she stated.

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