He was of the opinion that poverty gap was a technological gap because no country in the world had developed without the capacity to manufacture basic devices and machines.

Therefore, he said, while the world is embracing technology, there was the need to pay attention to manufacturing physical machinery to support every country’s development efforts.

“When you’re going to exploit your gold, diamond, manganese, gas and oil, you use physical things, thus, machines to do that, and until we learn how to do basic things for ourselves, we will still be deficient in the totality of our lives,”Prof. Frimpong-Boateng emphasised. Prof Frimpong-Boateng made the remarks at the Information Technology Community Innovation Forum organised by the World Summit Awards (SWA) in collaboration with the Ghana Community Network Services Limited (GCNet) in Accra.

He noted that Africa was not partakers in the third industrial revolution; however, it learnt how to manufacture basic equipment for socio-economic activities. The forum, formed part of the framework of the 2018 World Summit Awards Grand Jury that afforded members of the jury the opportunity to meet local IT community and tech-entrepreneurs, government officials and corporate institutions to ignite their passions for the utilization of information technology in their work.

It also enabled the local IT professionals to interact with the members of the jury who were drawn all over the world for sharing of experiences and sustainable knowledge transfer. About 20 jury from Canada, Mexico, USA, Indonesia, Israel, Nigeria, Germany, Kuwait, Togo and Chile shared their experiences about their work in entrepreneurship, e-Government and e-Education, as well as agriculture, healthcare, e-Commerce and Block chain.

Mr Vincent Sowah Odotei, a Deputy Minister of Communications, in an earlier address, said the government would like to change the narrative and build a “Ghana Beyond Aid” and, thus, viewed digitisation as the main driver to attain that feat. In that regard, he said the Government over the past 20 months, had rolled out many digital programmes to support the country’s development efforts and assured that it was prepared to partner the international IT Community to bridge the digital divide across the country.

He said the Government would encourage ingenuity and youth entrepreneurship to impact positively in the society and engender economic growth. Mr Sowah Odotei said it was implementing the community information centres by using basic coding in the rural areas and would provide large technological park in Dawa, saying, the nation would not only be consumers of technology but be part of the production of technology.

Dr Nortey Omaboe, the Executive Chairman of the GCNet, in a separate interview with journalists, underscored the need for both private and public institutions to embrace innovative technologies to accelerate economic growth. He noted that adoption of innovative IT tools would enable the Government to close all revenue leakages and increase collection of taxes and levies to support the country’s development efforts.

Professor Dr Peter A. Bruck, the Chairman of the WSA, said the WSA was made up of global network of people who are committed to excellence and determined to use creative IT tools for content and social impact. The WSA jury members, he said over the past four days, had been exploring the country’s culture, tourism and socio-economic environment and how they could employ creative IT tools for the good of the society.   

The World Summit Awards is an international competition, which aims to select and promote the world’s best start-up companies in digital content and innovative applications. It has been founded in the framework of the United Nations’ World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), mandated by the WSIS Plan of Action, and cooperates with UNESCO and UNIDO and is organized by the International Centre for New Media, Salzburg, Austria.