The Gambia seeks Ghana’s expertise to develop its telecoms sector
September 19th 2021
Long among the continent’s bad pupils for the poor preparation of its telecommunications sector, The Gambia wants to change everything. The country has decided to learn from others to take greater advantage of the financial opportunities offered by ICT, Telecoms.
A delegation from the Gambian Ministry of Information and Communication Infrastructure visited Ghana, Accra, last week. She came to learn from the host country’s experience in the management and development of the telecommunications sector.
According to Ebrima Sillah, the Gambian Minister of Information and Communication Infrastructure, head of the Gambian delegation, “ this visit will enable them to strengthen the innovation ecosystem in The Gambia, through the adoption and implementation innovation-friendly policies and strategies, promote and foster digital entrepreneurship in The Gambia through government-led innovation enterprises, improve the ICT policy and regulatory environment and ensure increased use of ICT infrastructure and better access to ICT services ”.
In all the reports of international organizations, in particular the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), The Gambia appears among the nations of the continent with a poor level of development of the telecoms environment. In the Network Readiness Index 2020, Portulans Institute and Sterlite Technologies Limited rank the country 21 st in Africa for its technological maturity, the access of its population to telecom services, its regulation and the contribution of the telecoms sector to the economy. His average of 29.40 out of 100. Ghana occupies the 9 th African ranking.
With a better prepared telecoms sector, the Gambian telecoms ministry believes that the country will be able to benefit more from several leverage effects for its economy. In its 2019 report “Economic contribution of broadband, digitization and ICT regulation Econometric modeling for Africa”, the ITU estimated that an increase in the penetration rate of mobile broadband by 10% has the potential to increase the gross domestic product ( GDP) of 2.5%; better regulation can induce 0.68% growth in digitization; a 10% increase in digitization can generate 1.9% GDP growth.
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