The National Information Technology Agency (NITA) in partnership with the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) on Tuesday, November 14, 2023, held a capacity-building workshop for selected media practitioners in the Greater Accra Region. The workshop was to engage the media on the role of NITA in the digital ecosystem and the collaborations with its sister agencies under the Ministry of Communication and Digitalization (MOCD)

Over seventy (70) participants attended the workshop, which included media personalities (morning show hosts and prominent journalists) as well as representatives from its parent ministry and the invited agencies, such as the National Communication Authority (NCA), Ghana Post, Cyber Security Authority (CSA), Ghana Meteorological Agency (GMET), Postal and Courier Services Regulatory Commission (PCSRC), Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence (AITI-KACE) and others.

In his opening remarks, the Director General of NITA, Richard Okyere-Fosu, emphasized the importance of the media and the invited agencies present in changing the public’s perception of NITA and how it has strayed from its core mandate of being the IT arm of the government of Ghana as well as the regulator within the ICT space in the country, and has instead been engaged in providing internet for government agencies.

Over seventy (70) participants attended the workshop, which included media personalities (morning show hosts and prominent journalists) as well as representatives from its parent ministry and the invited agencies, such as the National Communication Authority (NCA), Ghana Post, Cyber Security Authority (CSA), Ghana Meteorological Agency (GMET), Postal and Courier Services Regulatory Commission (PCSRC), Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence (AITI-KACE) and others.

He also spoke on efforts being made to ensure that IT-related gadgets brought into the country meet the required standards, and cited an example where NITA discovered through its own internal investigations that it had been supplied with out-of-date devices, thus saving his agency from incurring such loss.

The workshop had four presentations from NITA, NCA, CSA and Ghana Investment fund for Electronic Communication (GIFEC). The presentations focused on the country’s digitalization journey thus far and how the agencies are working together to attain that goal. The necessity of Digital Infrastructure and how a nation need Connectivity, Payment Infrastructure, ID Infrastructure, and Data Infrastructure was emphasized.

At the end of the workshop, there was a questions and answers (Q&A) session in which NITA and its sister agencies took turns addressing questions from the media personalities in attendance about A.I., Data Center, community digitization, etc.

Derya Bischoff, Advisor, Pan-African e-commerce Initiative, GIZ Ghana, in her closing remarks congratulated the organizing team of NITA and all resource persons from sister agencies on putting together such an insightful workshop and stated that GIZ would like to be involved in future engagements of a similar nature. She finally encouraged the participants to share the firsthand knowledge and information acquired from the workshop to their various audiences, ensuring wider benefit.

About NITA
NITA is the Government of Ghana’s agency established under the Ministry of Communications by an Act of Parliament (Act 771) and mandated with the primary objective to regulate the provision of Information Communications Technology (ICT), ensure the provision of quality Information Communications Technology, promote standards of efficiency and to ensure high quality of service.