Minister for Communications and Digitalization, Mrs. Ursula Owusu-Ekuful has charged Africa and other less developed parts of the world not to be bystanders in the efforts to bridge the standardisation gaps in the digital transformation.
Every effort, she said, should be made to close the technological gap between the rich and poor nations in a manner that does not stifle creativity or innovation but provides access to appropriate technologies and funding for holistic development.
According to her, a lot of collaboration is expected of digital product manufacturers, technology solution providers, telecom standards development organizations, and governments to guarantee maximum protection for consumers in the use and adoption of digital technologies.
Mrs. Ursula Owusu made the call Sunday, 28th February, 2022, in a keynote address she delivered at the Global Standards Symposium (GSS-20) organized by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).
She stated it is imperative all Standards Development Organizations work together in this area of digital transformation to ensure railroad colonialism does not happen again.
She noted that uncoordinated and deliberately skewed development of any kind can have dire consequences for whole regions of the world and by extension humanity generally and cited the railway gauge fiasco as an example.
She averred that African countries for decades inherited colonial standards and systems that prevented coordinated investment to drive the railway interconnectivity across Africa, to the point where only 16% of total African trade is among African neighbouring countries compared to over 60% within the European Union and over 50% in Asia.
“The Trans-African Highway would still not be on the drawing board, and logistical connectivity across the continent would not be the most expensive in the world had railway connectivity not been hampered by borrowed standards, or what Manu Karuka calls “railroad colonialism”.”
“Have any lessons been learnt from this and many other examples of haphazard development of infrastructure, applications, systems be it physical or digital around the less developed parts of our connected world? The ITU undoubtedly has and that is why we are having this conversation today,” she stated.
Mrs. Ursual Owusu disclosed that Ghana is intensifying its digital transformation drive with the ultimate goal of improving lives pursuant to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) by ensuring the required frameworks are in place.
The Ghana government, she said, is playing a pivotal role through the Ministry of Communications in the development of a robust framework to support digitalization of the economy in a manner that benefits citizens.
She said, “We are building fibre to our borders and are active in continental initiatives such as the Smart Africa Alliance.”
“We are also determined to make the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) work, clear in our minds that digital technology holds the key to uniting our fragmented and uncoordinated trade infrastructure and systems on the continent.”
According to her, given digitalisation affects all facets of the economy and society, and requires governments to reach across traditional policy silos and across different levels and industry verticals, an ‘all-inclusive’ approach to policy-making becomes indispensable to unlocking the full potential of digital transformation.
The ITU, she said, has and continues to play a pivotal role in standardization efforts towards the achievement of the SDGs and that the government would also continue to make available the necessary wherewithal to support the standardization work of the ITU and its allied bodies
Source: MyPublisher24.com