Accra, Ghana//-Ghana’s ICT sector which is currently estimated at $1 billion may reach $5 billion by 2030 as both government and the private sector continue to make significant investment in the sector.
To this end, the government has adopted to digitalise the country’s economy, meaning, ICT more than ever is important to Ghana’s economy.
The Director-General of National Information Technology Agency (NITA), Richard Okyere-Fosu disclosed this at the Agency’s recent ICT Stakeholders Forum.
Since the adoption and implementation of the Ghana ICT for Accelerated Development (ICT4AD) policy in 2003 serving as a framework to guide all sectors of the economy, Ghana has witnessed the impact of ICTs in health, education, agriculture, tourism, finance, information, communication, security, among others, and general service delivery.
In 2017, the Ministry of Communications and Digitalisation was mandated to lead and champion the Government’s Digital Agenda through the implementation of digital initiatives to bring services closer to the people.
“We can all attest to the embossment of digital addresses at our houses and business, implementation of interoperability platform that has enabled the digital financing sector and roped in more to bank using the mobile money platform, issuance of Ghana card and its integration with SSNIT, bank accounts, SIMs, and other critical services where verification and authentication are required, Ghana.Gov platform for access and payment of public services, etc”, Minister of Communications and Digitalisation (MOCD), Mrs. Ursula Owusu Ekuful, said.
The private sector has also stepped up to the plate and effectively matched these developments with innovation and technology in their service delivery as well and all these are fast tracking our development.
Benefits
The benefits of these initiatives to the citizens cannot be quantified. The ICT sector therefore requires a strong regulator ensuring that businesses thrive, and consumers receive value for money on products, solutions and services rendered by the ICT industry, according to her.
As the sector grows, it comes with its associated risk and hazards that requires proper management to prevent loss of resources for citizens, businesses, and the economy at large.
It is therefore imperative that the government partners with the private sector to ensure that systems are standardized to withstand attacks.
Act 771 requires that all ICT service providers and practitioners register with NITA and must be in good standing to qualify to do business.
There will be a database of such businesses and practitioners who are in good standing with the regulator. This database will be made available to businesses online to confirm ICT service providers and practitioners who are in good standing to reduce occupational risk to businesses. Those who fail to register will be sanctioned, Mrs Owusu-Ekuful warned.
Partnerships
NITA partnering with academia and industry is the surest way of providing tailored solutions that address the country’s peculiar problems as a nation and saving the nation of much needed forex and export of some of the Ghanaian made solutions.
The Ministry as part of its effort to position the ICT sector well, is currently conducting a gap analysis of all the laws and regulations to determine whether the existing laws and regulations are still relevant and adequate for the maturity of our ecosystem in the ensuing years.
“We will then work to develop additional laws and regulations if the study identifies any such gaps. The ministry is consulting with stakeholders to finalise the Digital Economy Policy and strategy for Ghana”.
The Digital Economy Policy is the successor to the ICT4AD policy and will be expected to move Ghana’s digital agenda to the next level and drive all the needed initiatives and programs to accelerate Ghana’s development.
“The era of a digitalised economy has come to stay. We will have to organise ourselves as a community to ensure a stable and reliable ecosystem with enough opportunities for all. The ecosystem should grow at a sustainable rate and contribute its quota to the total transformation of our economy”, she said.
NITA was established and clothed with two Acts (Act 771 and Act 772) to regulate the provision of ICT, ensure the provision of ICT, promote standards, and ensure high quality of service.
Per the Act NITA is to regulate the ICT sector and act as government’s Chief Technical Agency on the matter of technology. NITA is responsible for the implementation of government’s ICT policies.
“Our approach will be to identify what we call specific regulatory verticals within the sector and develop specific regulations, guidelines, and standards for each identified regulatory vertical”, Mr Okyere-Fosu acknowledged.
Some of the regulatory verticals NITA has so far identified are:
ICT Vendors or Service Providers: The activities of service providers must somehow be regulated to ensure that consumers within the sector are protected as well as the quality and standards of product and services offered meet international standards. This will make our sector and Ghana an attractive destination for investment.
ICT Professionals: As the sector grows and attracts more investment, the quality of the professionals within the sector is key to convince investors that the environment has the needed skills, experience, and professionalism as they are used to in other jurisdictions.
Commercial Data Center Providers: Ghana now has about six commercial Data Centres and there are more in the pipeline. For the security, reliability, availability, affordability of data centre infrastructure services, the sector must be regulated to provide the much-needed infrastructure to support the growth of the sector.
Commercial Cloud Infrastructure Providers: “With the right regulations, we believe we will be able to attract the right investment in cloud and position Ghana as a hub for cloud services for at least the West African region and ensure competitive pricing”, Mr Okyere-Fosu assured.
eCommerce Providers: This is one area we are way behind with respect to regulation as this vertical has long taken off. With both local and international players, we will need to quickly roll out the much needed and inclusive regulation to ensure that our market is well protected as well as the interest of consumers, he said.
Public Sector ICT: The public sector IT if not regulated stands to pose one of the most impactful risks to our economy. This is because it hosts several critical government systems that must be regulated in terms of the technologies adopted, the way they are operated, and managed.
The public sector IT infrastructure is integrated into the whole economy of the country and as such much attention needs to be paid to ensure this vertical is very well regulated.
Public Key Infrastructure: The issue of digital certificates, encryption, authentication, and authorisation is key to protect the ICT ecosystem.
The root PKI system has been deployed and several certificate authorities will have to be certified to provide certificate and encryption services to businesses and citizens. The right regulation is needed.
NITA is currently working with different consultants and partners (such as Smart Africa, GIZ, World Bank Sponsored eTransform Project) under different projects in the development of the regulations for the above-mentioned verticals.
At different stages of the development of specific regulations, “we will engage the needed stakeholders within the sector to get their input.
This will improve on the acceptability and adherence when these regulations are rolled out. We will therefore entreat members of the community to stay in touch and be informed accordingly”.
NITA is working to procure a consultant to work with in the development of NITA’s five-year strategic plan. This plan will better position NITA within the sector with a renewed vision, mission, and well-defined activities to deliver on its mandate, he revealed.
The organisation is also currently into serious capacity building to equip staff with the needed skill for our regulatory journey. All these are geared towards building a modern regulatory institution fit for its purpose.
Collaborations
For NITA, collaborative regulation is its approach to regulating the ICT industry. Collaboration within government (other regulators), with the industry, academia, developing partners and the international community is critical.
The Agency’s effort to regulate the ICT sector will enable more opportunities, promote fair play, promote quality and standards, and help grow the sector for the benefit of all stakeholders.
From 2023, Mr Oyere-Fosu disclosed that the Agency would have specific engagements even outside of the ICT sector. ICT cuts across all sectors of the economy and every sector is now employing ICT to deliver its services.
The use of electronic transactions and electronic data (governed by Act 772) across all sectors of the economy suggest that NITA will somehow have to work and collaborate with the regulators across these sectors to align their regulations with respect to ICT.
The authorities at NITA are very mindful not to over-regulate or overburden businesses in the name of regulations but as a government they would have to align their regulations, processes, fees to ensure that the business of regulation does not end up killing businesses.
“We hope to collaborate with regulators in the finance, educational, energy, agriculture, trade, etc to have universal ICT regulation across all sectors and simplify the act of regulations using technology”.
Another area within the sector that NITA is hoping to pay attention to is academia. NITA will partner with academia to churn out a number of studies about the ICT sector to better understand the current state of the sector and work with them to influence government policies especially in the area of funding critical academic research works that seeks to find local solutions to our local problems in the ICT sector.
Other Initiatives
As NITA regulates the sector, there are other initiatives it is undertaking to impact on its regulatory function, and it believes the sector will also be interested in.
In 2023, NITA will collaborate with the industry to institute an ICT week. The activity will be set aside for industry stakeholders to engage on matters that affect the industry both positively and negatively. This will also afford the government to engage the industry on how best to collaborate to craft out the needed policies to further stimulate the industry.
This will give the industry the opportunity to sensitise the public on some carefully selected topics and issues as part of public education.
Another initiative that the regulator will be rolling out will be the publishing of the Annual Digital Economy Index Report also known as the Inclusive Digital Economy Scorecard (IDES).
“For all the efforts and investments that we are throwing at digitising our economy, we need a tool that will help us on an annual basis monitor and evaluate the outputs of these efforts and investment and inform the industry whether we are getting value”.
NITA has been working with the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) to develop a framework to track efforts in digitalising the country’s economy.
This will provide NITA with the data to influence decision and policy making by government. It will also provide investors with informed data on opportunities within the sector and the risk areas.
With this tool Ghana will be able to access its performance on its digital initiative on both the continental and global level. The initiative will formally be lunched within the first quarter of 2023.
