India to invest $860,000 in ICT in Ghana

ACCRA, GHANA: India will invest $860,000 in Ghana to support information and communication technology (ICT) development, with New Delhi committed to sharing its expertise in the area with the west African nation.

"Today ICT forms the bedrock of all modern endeavours," Indian High Commissioner Ruchi Ghanashyam said at a ceremony where she signed an MoU with the Ghana government under which India is to support ICT development with the investment of $860,000.

Under the agreement, the money would be used by the Accra-based Ghana-India Kofi Annan ICT Centre for Excellence (GIKAICE) to build the capacity of Ghanaians in ICT and also provide books for the centre. The training programmes are to be run with the help of personnel from the Centre for the Development of Advanced Computing of India.

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She said the GIKAICE was a bilateral effort in the spirit of South-South cooperation and hoped that the facilities at the centre would continue to enrich and strengthen Ghana's effort at transforming itself into a modern knowledge-based economy.

Ghana's Foreign Minister Mohammed Mumuni said: "India has contributed immensely in technical assistance to Ghana through various bilateral and multilateral projects by different organisation in the country."

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Mumuni said the Ghanaian government was committed to investing in the human resource development of every Ghanaian and hoped the MoU would provide the vehicle to achieve the government's objective.

"The solidarity and sustained support of the government and people of India towards the realisation of the national agenda of Ghana has been demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt," he added.