Speaker of Ecowas Parliament, Dr Sidie Mohamed Tunis has charged Ecowas members to adopt the use of Information Communication Technology(ICT) to fight against violence, crime and terrorism battling Africa.
Dr Sidie Mohamed Tunis lamented that some Ecowas countries are negatively affected by terrorism, Humanitarian crises, violence and pocket of social vices and it is against this background that Dr Sidie Mohamed Tunis appealed to all Ecowas members to use technology to fight the canker.
Ecowas Speaker of Parliament disclosed this during the opening ceremony of the 5th Legislature meetings of the ECOWAS Joint Committee at Winneba in the Effutu Constituency in the Central Region.
On his part, the Speaker of Ghana Parliament, Rt Hon Alban Kingsford Sumana Bagbin who grace the occasion added that technology is helping the world but child trafficking and cybercrime in the sub-region is also on the rise due to technology and such situation needs immediate attention.
Adding his voice to the advocacy, Deputy Majority Leader of Parliament, Hon Afenyo Markin who doubles as the head of Ghana delegation to Ecowas Parliament said, it’s time for African leaders to extend the ICT to their various communities in their countries to help compete with the Western World because according to him most African countries do not have a lot of ICT expertise to champion the developmental agenda
Ghana is currently implementing digitization agenda in which ICT is the centre of all spheres of lives and it is against this backdrop that in a global index for fastest internet speeds, measured by Speedtest Global Index, Ghana’s internet was ranked first in Africa and it is ahead of South Africa and Egypt.
Ghana was ranked 79th in the world, with a speed of 53.28 Mbps, which is the fastest in Africa.
South Africa placed 85th in the world and 2nd in Africa with a 47.32 Mbps speed, while Egypt came 91st in the world and 3rd in Africa with a speed of 42.42 Mbps.
The global internet speed captured internet speeds in about 180 countries.
Ghana is currently on a massive digitization drive dubbed the Digital Ghana Agenda, where all government services are being digitized to be accessed via the Ghana.gov.gh portal. As a result, all stakeholders in the tech ecosystem have been on a drive to boost service quality to support the agenda.
Moreover, amid the Covid-19, the Ministry of Communications, through the National Communications Authority, released some free spectrum to the leading telecom service providers in the country to enable them to carry the huge data traffic that came with the pandemic.
That resulted in the ability of industry players to maintain quality of service and prevent congestion even though data traffic grew exponentially across the ecosystem.
In a related development, it emerged that Ghana has the most affordable mobile internet in sub-Saharan Africa, a report on world mobile internet data pricing has revealed.
The report, put together by UK’s internet experts, CABLE.CO.UK, compared the cost of 1GB of mobile data across 6,148 mobile data plans in 230 countries.
The report ranks Ghana’s internet pricing the cheapest in West Africa and one of the cheapest in the world at an average price for 1GB mobile data at $0.66.
On the African continent, Ghana’s mobile internet data is ranked the 4th cheapest, behind Sudan, Algeria and Somalia.
Gambia’s mobile internet data is the most expensive, with an average pricing for 1GB data at $5.86, while Equatorial Guinea has the most expensive mobile internet data pricing in Africa with an average of $49.67 for 1GB of mobile data.