The late Edward Salia is to thank for Ghana’s booming telecommunication industry, President John Dramani Mahama has said, saying the former Minister of Transport and Communication in the Rawlings administration did a lot to promote the sector.

According to President Mahama, the reforms in the telecom sector, which were put together by Mr Salia decades ago, have resulted in the growth of the new digital age and the liberalisation of the sector in Ghana.

“Two decades ago, we started reforms in the telecommunication sector on the back of the accelerated development programme for telecoms. This programme was launched in 1995 by Edward Salia, who at the time, was the Minister of Transport and Communication. So, if you talk about the new digital age and the liberalisation of the telecom sector, then the father or the midwife of that process is Edward Salia,” Mr Mahama said.

He added that following the period of Edward Salia, the Ministry of Communication was separated from Transport “and became a stand-alone ministry because the rate at which telecommunication technology was going, it was necessary to have a Ministry that was dedicated to that sector”.

“After the birth of that Ministry, Dr Ekwow Spio-Garbrah was the first Minister and I was his deputy, so together we continued from where Edward Salia left,” he added.

President Mahama made these comments at the ongoing African Mobile and ICT Expo, MOBEX, on Tuesday June 7.

He further stated that: “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 new born 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 emphasised.