UNESCO Presents IUIs Assessment Report to GIFEC
The Head of Office and Representative of UNESCO to Ghana, Mr. Abdourahamane Diallo recently called on the Administrator (CEO) and a select Staff of Ghana Investment Fund for Electronic Communications (GIFEC), to present the final report on the National Assessment of Internet Universality Indicators (IUIs) in Ghana, and discuss how the report could be adopted by GIFEC.
In his introductory remarks, Mr. Diallo said the IUI research, commenced in 2020 with GIFEC as a key stakeholder. He added that the report could not be published in 2022, as planned, due to some unexpected challenges, and appealed to GIFEC to adopt and help publish it.
Mr. Diallo emphasised that UNESCO has recently published a set of IUIs, as a means of supporting national and global debate about how to ensure that everyone can benefit from the Internet, adding that Ghana will soon join the six (6) countries; Senegal, Benin, Brazil, Germany, Kenya, and Thailand to have conducted and published a National Assessment of IUI.
Presenting a summary of the report on IUI in Ghana, Dr. Simon-Peter Kafui Aheto, the lead Researcher and a Senior Lecturer (Educational & Information Technologist), Department of Distance Education at the University of Ghana, said UNESCO’s IUIs are a set of 303 indicators that aim to assess the state of Internet development at the national level, according to the Rights, Openness, Accessibility and Multi-stakeholder (ROAM) principles of human participation.
He stressed that the assessment’s aim is to develop a clear and substantive understanding of the national Internet environment, assess environment and policies in relation to the implementation of UNESCO’s ROAM principles and formulate policy recommendations that can help improve Internet development in the country.
Dr. Aheto finally highlighted the importance of Ghana to adopt the report, emphasising that Ghana is the first country to develop 127 questions for IUI research, relative to the standard 124 questions developed by UNESCO.
In response, the Administrator (CEO) of GIFEC, Mr. Prince Ofosu Sefah thanked UNESCO for the effort, and said that GIFEC will soon conduct an impact assessment of its programmes, which will be linked to the activities of the Information For All Programme (IFAP). He added that the IUI report will be incorporated into a planned presentation about the IFAP to the Board of Trustees (BOT) in the near-future.
