Let's take IT serious – Ga Mantse

King Tackie Tawiah II is the Ga Mantse

By William Yaw Owusu

Saturday March 27, 2010
The Ga Mantse Nii Tackie Tawiah II says the only way to guarantee the country’s accelerated growth and development is to persist in the pursuit of Information Technology (IT) and make it the backbone of the economy.

“I.T is the only opportunity left to explore the limited avenues that we have as a developing country and we have to pursue it vigorously.”

Nii Tackie Tawiah II was speaking Thursday at a mini durbar held by the Ga Traditional Council in honour of Micheal and Vivien Blair, founders of GS Telecom who have since 2002 been operating the MVBIT Centre to train Ghanaian youth in computer science and technology at highly subsidized rates.

They were at the Ga Mantse’s Palace together with Peter Larson, President of S1 Networks Incorporated, a partner to announce to the king that they had received accreditation to open a tertiary institution called DLI University College to train more people in computer science and business administration.

The MVBITC which has 282 students currently sponsors about 200 Ga youth to pursue Microsoft office suites, website design programming, hardware and networking.
The Ga Mantse said the study of IT is crucial because it is not an individual acquisition but rather serves as a pool where talents are drawn for various sectors of the country’s economy.

“Ghana is doing well to establish herself as the gateway to Africa and the study of IT by the youth should be able to get us there.”

He commended the Blairs and Mr. Larson for their philanthropic work saying “your contribution is augmenting government’s effort to make IT a mainstay of the economy.”
Mr. Blair for his part said his company GS Telecom trains local engineers on satellite and wireless communication systems saying “we want the people to benefit from what you do because we operate here.”

He said Ghana has the potential to explore the IT sector to expand the economy adding “from what I see, the country is on track to getting there.”
He said the new university will focus on ICT to support government’s agenda of making it the backbone of the economy. “We will be interested in quality and not quantity,”he noted.

Rev. Mawuli Dieudonne Tasiame who is the head of the training centre said the university will commence in September adding “we have designed a migration plan to enable those at the centre pursue further education at the university.”

Also see: www.dailyguideghana.com