Indigenous information and communications technology company, Alltel Technologies Limited, says it is investing more than US$200 million in its product value chain to create some 10,000 entrepreneurial jobs over the next two years.
The project involves the creation of franchises and dealerships for distributing the company’s technology devices, designed to meet specific needs of local businesses and individuals.
The devices include smart ultra-high definition computers, tablets, ‘phablets’ and mobile phones with localised applications and Wi-Fi connections.
The Executive Chairman of Alltel, Mr Prince Kofi Kludjeson, also a former President of the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI), said the move was to complement the government’s effort to leverage ICT to advance the country’s economic growth.
He said this when the Minister of Communications, Dr Edward Omane Boamah, visited the operational centre of Alltel at the Ghana House, in Accra.
The visit enabled him to ascertain the progress of work on the multi-million dollar project for himself.
He said as a medium term plan, the company would also establish technology learning centres to deepen education in sectors such as health and agriculture through partnerships and franchising.
“We want to do a very major collaboration with the government because in all these things even in a developed world such as Silicon Valley, there's always a major collaboration between educational institutions and the government,” Mr Kludjeson said.
That would be in the form of educational institutions providing the support and the government providing sound policies to facilitate the operation of businesses.
“One of the things we want to do is to contribute to growth of the ICT sector so collaboration is one of the major things we're looking for, not financial support because we can create our own equity and funding for that,” Mr Kludjeson, who has played in the ICT sector for decades, said.
He said the National Information Technology Agency (NITA) was a national body which was building good infrastructure, which private sector companies such as Alltel could leverage, saying “we can collaborate so that we can use some of these services to be able to deliver services to the people at affordable prices.”
Dr Boamah lauded the initiative, saying it was in line with the government’s plans to broaden the ICT base in the country.
“A lot of things are happening in Ghana and this obviously is a manifestation of the fact that Ghanaians can do a lot in the information and communications and technology sector.
Mr Kludjeson is trying to bridge the digital divide,” Dr Boamah said.
NITA
The National IT Agency has invested massively in infrastructure, LTE technology is being deployed, fibre is being deployed in the eastern part of the country. Submarine cables running into about 12.3 terabytes are also available. As we speak now several community information centres have been completed” he noted.
“This year we're constructing 21 more community information centers and so we have encouraged them to sit with the National IT Agency so that we can fashion out a public-private partnership to ensure a win-win situation for the youth of this country and also for the investors – that’s government and the private sector.
The coming-in of the NITA infrastructure will even serve as a catalyst for them to achieve the 10,000 jobs target within a much shorter time and even create more.
We have also made available to them, the data centre which is currently under construction where they can keep some of their servers and racks in there at a cost just like other institutions that would want to take advantage of the ambience at the centre ” he said.