Addis Ababa, Feb 1, GNA- Vice President John Dramani Mahama on Monday gave the assurance that the government had no intention of abrogating the deal with Vodafone Ghana despite some few concerns expressed about it. "There had been concerns on the deal, but as a government we are looking forward to streamlining those concerns to pave way for effective connectivity and industrial growth through Information Communication and Technology(ICT)."

The Vice President gave these assurance when a World Bank ICT delegation called on him at the Ghana Embassy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to negotiate for investment in the sector in Ghana.

He said although there were Telecommunication networks in the country, there was the need to consider accepting other companies in the ICT sector to promote competition and quality services.

"We will make sure that Broadband internet services and other areas of ICT become accessible to Ghanaians everywhere and that is why partnership with experts like you is crucial and useful for our development". Mr. Mahama said Ghana was positioning herself to become the ICT hub on the entire African continent and called on its partners in that direction to respect their roles and responsibilities towards the achievement of that goal.

"We have prioritized ICT and several projects, by moving the sector from five per cent to almost 50 per cent in a very short time." He said the government was poised to promote the egovernance and eImmigration ICT programmes to speed up the development needs of the country and also facilitate the activities of migrants in the country. Dr. Mohsen A. Khalil, Director of Global and Communication Technologies who led the delegation said they would be happy to be given the opportunity to invest in the Telecommunication sector in Ghana.

He said their main aim was to provide interconnectivity in the West African sub-region to serve as a tool for rapid socio-economic development. "Currently the communication set ups in most West African countries is not the best and we believe that given the opportunity, we can facilitate the rapid development of the region through ICT." Dr. Khalil promised to collaborate with the government of Ghana to make ICT available to all the sectors of the Ghanaian society. 1 Feb. 10