PARTNER CONTENT: Ghana government’s Ghana Rural Telephony and Digital Inclusion Project (GRT&DIP) partnering with Huawei has been a tremendous boost to government’s digitalization agenda, which is aimed at ensuring access to digital infrastructure and services to the remotest communities in Ghana.

More than 2,000 RuralStar sites were deployed through the project to provide voice and data services for over 3.4 million people in underserved and unserved communities in Ghana.

These ubiquitous mobile networks have promoted improvements in various fields such as education, healthcare, poverty eradication and environmental protection, which facilitate the goals of SDG1 (no poverty), SDG3 (good health and well-being), SDG4 (quality education), SDG10 (reduced inequalities) and SDG 13 (climate action).

Education: Nearly 2,000 schools are benefiting from fast circulation of the latest curriculum content, bridging the gap between urban and rural education resources and providing internet-based training to improve students’ computer skills and promote employment.

Economy: Mobile penetration will see a 9.6% increase by 2023, leading to a 0.78% and a 1.74% increase in GDP and employment, respectively. One and a half million rural people in Ghana are using mobile money services to make up for the inadequacy of rural financial services. The mobile money services, including money transfer and small-scale consumption, are boosting business transactions and rural income. Since mobile networks were deployed, residents have been able to communicate with each other via voice, messaging, images, and videos, and to sell their latest agricultural products fast and conveniently.

Health care: More than 200 rural clinics have been connected, allowing the latest medical information to be distributed to remote villages, helping rural doctors improve their skills. In an emergency, rural doctors can quickly communicate with urban hospitals to obtain emergency assistance. This helps save lives, for example, during emergency treatment in neonatal care.

Environmental protection: Independent from the power grid, the intelligent solar power solution, which forms a part of RuralStar sites, eliminates the need for diesel generators and grid power. It not only solves the problem of unstable power supply, but also does away with fuel costs and CO2 emissions, minimizing the impact of communications networks on the environment.

The Ghana government’s GRT&DIP is backed by the Ghana Ministry of Communications and Digitalization (MoCD), with Ghana Investment Fund For Electronic Communications (GIFEC) as its implementation agency and Huawei as its inclusive connectivity solutions provider.

After a successful initial deployment of 2,000 base stations, Ghana’s government has decided to add another 1,000 base stations in the second phase, which will further expand network coverage to 99% of Ghanaian population in 2024.

Prince Ofosu Sefah, Administrator of GIFEC, said, “We are glad to be a significant part of Huawei’s inclusive connectivity solutions, which I’m told have connected over 60 million people in remote areas in more than 70 countries around the world. ”

The main challenge is that rural coverage is unappealing to mobile network operators (MNOs) because of the high infrastructure CAPEX and OPEX along with relatively long period of return on investment (ROI). The success of GRT&DIP sets a good example. Ghana’s MoCD provided policy support and GIFEC provided financial support and developed special purpose vehicles (SPVs) that rent spectrum and transmission networks from MNOs and built RANs. This project has improved the digitalization level of Ghana’s rural network while bridging the digital divide. This business mode is sustainable and can be replicated in other countries and regions, for example, Nigeria. With nearly half of its population of over 200 million living in rural areas, Nigeria is one such region where the government is working with Huawei using Ghana’s successful case to deploy base stations on a large scale.