Ursula inaugurates new GIFEC board

Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, Minister of Communications, has inaugurated a 10-member board of trustees for the Ghana Investment Fund for Electronic Communications (GIFEC) at a short ceremony in Accra.

The board members, who were inaugurated by Justice George Boadi, was charged to assist GIFEC to achieve its mandate.

Members include Kennedy Agyapong, chairman of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Communication; Issa Yahaya, Chief Director, Ministry of Communication; A. Kofi Asante, acting Administrator/CEO; Joe Anokye, acting Director General, NCA; Ken Gomado, Finance Director, Vodafone Ghana; William Tetteh, Head of Capital Project, MTN Ghana; Ernest Brown, president of GISPA; Emmanuel Adjei, Head of Legal, Airtel and Sylvia Owusu Ankomah, Director of Regulatory at Tigo.

In her inaugural speech, the minister said she was happy with the mix of competences on the Board, and was very confident that they could provide the needed oversight for the management of GIFEC.

She stated that GIFEC was one of the important agencies under her ministry.

The minister, who is also the chairperson of the board, charged GIFEC to live up to its mandate as established by law and ensure that no community was left behind in its universal access programme.

In the view of the communication, the Board must also consider new areas of Information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D) like Software development, projects incubation and innovation to expand the scope of the operations of GIFEC.

She informed the Trustees that the Electronic Communications Act would be reviewed very soon to reflect the new mandate of GIFEC.

The minister called on GIFEC to collaborate with National Information Technology Agency (NITA) and tasked GIFEC to make use of the Broadband Infrastructure being deployed by NITA, stressing that “as we share our resources we would be able to extend our reach.”

She congratulated the Trustees on their nomination to serve on the Board by their respective Mobile Network Operators (MNOs).

Speaking on behalf of his colleagues, Mr. Tetteh thanked the Minister and President Nana Addo for the honour done them.