An international partnership between global tech giant, Huawei Technologies Ghana, China National Technical Imp. & Exp. Corp and Government of Ghana Ministry of Communications through Ghana Investment Fund for Electronic Communications (GIFEC) have officially launched the Rural Telephony Project.
The project was launched on Wednesday, November 4, 2020, and is situated at the New Edubiase District in the Ashanti Region.
It marks the beginning of subsequent commissioning of 2016 Rural Star sites in Ghana: utilizing the customized Huawei’s novel RuralStar Technology for Ghana.
It is also predicted that the project will earn the government cost savings up to 70% of traditional cell sites cost of providing 3.4 million people in remote communities with voice and data services and increase national mobile communication coverage from 83% to 95% to further drive local economic development.
According to H.E Nana Addo Dankwah Akuffo-Addo, President of Ghana, “The Ministry of communications and the Ghana Investment Fund for Electrical Communication (GIFEC) working in partnership with mobile network operators, like MTN, Vodafone and Huawei is rolling out a rural telephony project to provide data and voice connectivity to 2016 rural telephony sites, strategically located in underserved and unserved communities across the country”.
He further explained how accessibility will be provided to Ghanaians across all demographics, giving no preference to religion, class, location, or identity, providing network coverage to over 300,000 communities.
400 Rural Star sites have been deployed by GIFEC, through the Rural Telephony Project across more than 2000 rural communities and have provided network services to over 1,200,000 people in Ghana.