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Digital ecosystem to create 10,000 jobs near completion - Mahama

President Mahama said the project is one of government’s initiatives to create opportunity for sustainable entrepreneurial employment for young people.

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According to President Mahama, the project is one of government’s initiatives to create opportunity for sustainable entrepreneurial employment for young people.

He made the comments at the 2nd African Mobile and ICT Expo (MOBEX 2016) in Accra.

“One of government’s initiatives and infrastructural investment that would create opportunity for sustainable opportunity and entrepreneurial employment for 10,000 of our young people in the digital eco system is the development of the BPO center near the Kwame Nkrumah Interchange,” he said.

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“It’s almost finished and we would be commissioning it very soon. The facility with the capacity of close to 10,000 direct and indirect jobs would be made available at affordable rates for start-ups and emerging ICT companies that are able and willing to carry out digital operations” the president added.

The $8.3 million project started in 2011 and it is financed by the World Bank and the Rockefeller Foundation.

The center is a collection of 12 old warehouses of the Public Works Department (PWD) which have been renovated into world class office buildings with each of the buildings occupying a space of 735 square meters, making a total of 8,820 square meters.

President Mahama also added that other innovations are being developed to boost the innovation of the digital system.

“The Ministry of communication is also developing a number of innovations including the M-Labs, I-hubs, Accra Business Processing Outsourcing Center (BPO), the Kumasi Business Incubator, The regional innovation centers and the ICT Park in Tema to boost the innovation digital system,” he said.

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Touching on the telecom sector, the president said significant gains have been made, citing periods where people had to climb trees to get good reception and queue to use a community telephone boot.

“At that time the technology was different, you had voice separate, data separate and video separate, and we hadn’t reached the era of convergence yet, it started to happen much later.”

“The only place you could make external calls was the High Street and you have to go very early and go and queue and then you give the number of the person you want to call.

“So they will call the person, they had about four or five boots at the time, so when your name is mentioned, you will go to one of the boots to make the call…if you had a fixed telephone number and you want to make an external call, you booked it and you were told the call will come between Wednesday and Thursday so what does that mean?

“So Wednesday and Thursday you must sit at home and not go anywhere just because you’ve have to call outside? Today our children don’t remember this, you just whip out your mobile phone and call anywhere in the world.”

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He added that Ghana now stands tall in the field of ICT and telecom markets with 33 million subscriptions.

“Today, Ghana stands tall as one of the progressive ICT and telecom markets with six mobile operators and over 33 million subscriptions. It means that if we were supposed to share the subscriptions, we are supposed to be about 27 million people, then it means every newborn baby has a mobile phone, but I know that some people have five, others have four, others have two, at least I have three,” he said.

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