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 Rev. Ing. Edmund Yirenkyi Fianko
Rev. Ing. Edmund Yirenkyi Fianko

Rev. Ing. Edmund Fianko makes Ghana proud at International Telecommunication front

Ghanaian professionals are always striving hard to break the ceiling on the international front. One person who recently brought honour to our motherland is the acting Director of Engineering at the National Communications Authority (NCA), Rev. Ing. Edmund Yirenkyi Fianko.

He was recently elected into the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Radio Regulations Board (RRB) for the 2023 to 2026 term.

Rev. Ing. Fianko is one of the three RRB members representing Africa on the twelve-member board with the responsibility to approve the rules of procedure for the application of the radio and regulations and to adjudicate on matters brought before the board.

Rev. Ing. Fianko secured 126 votes from ITU Member States to be elected to the RRB. He becomes the second Ghanaian to serve on the RRB after the late Major (Retd) John Ray K. Tandoh was elected to the Board at the 1998 ITU Plenipotentiary Conference in Minneapolis-USA. Rev. Ing. Fianko will be attending the 92nd meeting of the RRB in Geneva, Switzerland from March 20-24, 2023. This will be his first meeting as a member of the Board.

Besides the individual election of Rev. Ing. Fianko,  Ghana was elected to the ITU Council representing Region D (Africa) with a total of 145 votes, the highest Ghana has secured at an ITU Council election.

 Rev. Ing. Fianko is one of the three RRB members representing Africa

"Getting elected into the RRB is particularly important to me on a personal level. The last and only other time Ghana was represented at the RRB was in 1998 when Major Tandoh was elected - coincidentally the late Major Tandoh recruited me into the NCA and i feel a sense of obligation to serve my nation and the continent as best as I can", Rev. Ing. Fianko recounts of his election.

 The ITU is the United Nations specialised agency for information and communications technologies – ICTs. It was founded in 1865 to facilitate international connectivity in communications networks. The ITU allocates global radio spectrum and satellite orbits, develops the technical standards that ensure networks and technologies seamlessly interconnect, and strives to improve access to ICTs to underserved communities worldwide.  Every time you make a phone call via mobile, access the Internet or send an email, you are benefitting from the work of ITU.
 
Who is Rev. Ing. Fianko?

Rev. Ing. Fianko began his professional career as a Frequency Management Officer in 2004 with the communications regulator, the  NCA.

By dint of hard work, he had an accelerated rise through the ranks to become the current acting Director of the Engineering Division with the responsibility for all frequency spectrum management activities in the country including planning, licensing, monitoring and enforcement.
 

Over the period, he has served as a chairman and a member of several technical and regulatory committees which formulated standards, guidelines, procedures for industry regulation and made far-reaching recommendations which have impacted the strategic direction of NCA till date.

For over eight years, he served as the Recorder for the Technical/Operations Sub-Committee of the NCA Board of Directors. He initiated and provided leadership for the automation of the NCA’s spectrum management processes to improve efficiency, accuracy, transparency and convenience to users of the radio frequency spectrum in Ghana.

Rev. Ing. Fianko has been instrumental in key national projects in the telecommunications sector in Ghana such as the transition from analogue terrestrial television to digital. As Secretary to Ghana’s Digital Broadcasting Migration Committee (DBMC) from 2010 to 2016, he coordinated the work of a multi-stakeholder national body to formulate and implement policy on the transition from analogue to digital broadcasting.

Rev. Ing. Fianko began his professional career as a Frequency Management Officer in 2004 with the communications regulator

He also initiated several interventions in the transition process including the development of minimum specifications for DTT receivers which were adopted as an ECOWAS specification in 2013.
He currently chairs a number of project teams to deliver key industry interventions such as the determination and implementation of significant market power measures in the mobile sector (May 2020 to date), implementation of Location Based System (LBS) for phone calls and Short Message Service (SMS) to the national emergency number 112 (April 2020 to date).

From January 2018 to June 2020 he chaired the project team for the establishment of the common monitoring platform for checking government revenues in the telecom sector by the NCA and GRA.

Since 2008, Rev. Ing. Fianko has played key technical coordinating roles in various spectrum licensing projects including  2G, 3G and 4G licences in various frequency bands which generated several millions of dollars for the State.


He serves as an ordained Minister of the Methodist Church Ghana

International level

At the international front, he is the current Chairman of the African Telecommunications Union (ATU) Task Group on Development of Spectrum Recommendations for Rural Connectivity and a member of the Technical Committee of the ITU Policy and Regulation Initiative for Digital Africa (PRIDA).

He previously advised the Administrations of Benin and the Gambia on Digital Broadcasting and LTE licensing respectively. He also served as a Consultant/Resource person to the ECOWAS Commission on Broadcasting and Spectrum Management on multiple occasions.


 
Family life
Rev. Ing. Fianko was born at Osu, a suburb of Accra  to Mr Samuel Fianko  and Mrs Elizabeth Afriyie Fianko who are both teachers. He is the first born of three children. He spent the first six years of his life at Nankese, a small town near Suhum in the Eastern Region before he moved to Accra for his primary education.

Educational background
Touching on his educational background, Rev. Ing. Fianko said he sat for the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) at St Martin de Porres School, Dansoman, a suburb of Accra and had his secondary education at the Pope John Senior Secondary School and Junior Seminary, Koforidua in the Eastern Region.

Afterwards, he gained admission to the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi where he obtained a first degree in Electrical/Electronic Engineering.  From there, he pursued a Master’s degree in Communications Management from the Buckinghamshire (Bucks) New University, England.

He is currently pursuing a Doctorate in Management degree from Universidad Católica de Murcia (UCAM), Spain. He is a member of the Ghana Institute of Engineers (GhIE) and a Member of the Institute of Electrical Electronic Engineers (IEEE).

Rev. Ing. Fianko is married to Dr Mrs Adwoa Boadua Yirenkyi-Fianko, a senior lecturer at the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration

Aside from his engineering work, wears various hats. He serves as an ordained Minister of the Methodist Church Ghana, a published author and the founding leader of the Evangelistic Outreach Ministry known as Nkwa.Life.

“I believe for a number of my mates especially from Pope John’s, they won’t be surprised at all to know I am an ordained Minister; what may surprise some will be the fact that I still pursued my dreams in Engineering while maintaining my faith in God and dedicating my life to propagating His Word as well”, he fondly says.

According to him, Nkwa.Life carries out gospel evangelistic crusades and outreaches to communities, schools, colleges, prisons and police cells across Ghana.

Rev. Ing. Fianko is married to Dr Mrs Adwoa Boadua Yirenkyi-Fianko, a senior lecturer at the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA) with whom he has two children, Keilah and Hephzie.

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