Legon and Kumasi Varsities win competitive tele-education project

The University of Ghana and the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, have jointly won a bid to run a special regional university under a five-year Pan African tele-education project.

The Minister of Communications, Professor Mike Oquaye, who announced this at the launch of Ghana's 50th anniversary Information and Communication Technologies Awards launch in Accra Friday however failed to elaborate on the major components of the project.

The Indian Government and the African Union are sponsoring the project.

The Minister catalogued some achievements chalked up by the Ghana in the area of ICT stressing that is the desire of government that Ghana becomes the ICT hub of the region.

Professor Oquaye said to promote a wider penetration of ICT services, the Ministry of Communications is working assiduously on the development of a national communications backbone infrastructure network.

When completed, this will provide open access broadband connectivity nationwide at affordable rates.

The minister also announced that government has been able to secure a concessionary loan facility of 30 million dollars to begin the project, while negotiations a re going on for an additional amount of 70 million dollars for the second phase of the project that will include e-governance connectivity infrastructure.

These are expected to complement the national fibre-optic network which when completed will link to the SAT-3 WASC line that will carry data, voice and internet services across the sub region to as far as Mali.

The communications minister also hinted that Westel and Ghana Telecom will be listed on the Ghana Stock Exchange before the ended of 2007.