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The Ghana Investment Fund for Electronic Communications (GIFEC) says the era where some Ghanaians in rural areas had difficulty with telecommunication access, hence had to climb trees, hills, mountains or have to be at a particular location in order to get service connection to make calls, will soon be over.

GIFEC says government collaborations with mobile network operators have over the years helped narrow the Ghanaian digital gap, and the outfit is bent on resolving all telecommunication network problems in rural areas across the country to boost communication.

GIFEC Administrator, Abraham Kofi Asante in an interview with Kwami Sefa Kayi on Peace FM’s morning show ‘Kokrokoo’, acknowledged that poor telecommunication connectivity and internet access in most communities in rural Ghana, hampered growth.

But as the institution mandated to facilitate access to electronic communications technology in the country, Mr Kofi Asante, said his outfit "intends putting up 300 Rural Telephony Project (RTP) sites by the end of next year to improve on the situation".

According to him, GIFEC, with the onset of its Universal Access to Telephony Programme, extended coverage of mobile telephone services to the very remotest areas through the Rural Telephony Project (RTP)’s close collaboration with Mobile Network Operators (MNOs).

Recently, GIFEC was awarded the 2017 World Champion in ICT applications by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU).

GIFEC was adjudged the winner in the E-environment category following its 112 public emergency response project it exhibited during the World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) Forum held in Geneva, Switzerland.

The annual event is the largest gathering of the IT community and it provides a platform for global multi-stakeholders to facilitate the implementation of the WSIS Action Lines for advancing UN sustainable development goals and targets.

The citation of the award recognized the extra-ordinary contribution of the organization towards strengthening the implementation of the WSIS outcomes in Ghana.

Touching on the difficulty people go through to access the internet in the rural areas or the situation whereby one has to climb a hilly ground for mobile network reception, Mr Kofi Asante assured that "it will soon be a thing of the past. We are working on that". 

“Most people in rural areas, mostly find it very difficult to get good receptions during the making of calls to their loved ones in the cities, as most have to either climb trees, or go to places where they can hear or get good call receptions.”

“But we are working closely with all the mobile network operators to make this a reality,” he added.