‘Bridge ICT gap between urban, rural youth’

Even though Ghana has advanced in terms of Information Communica­tion Technology (ICT), there still exist a gap between rural and urban folks when it comes to access to and usage of ICT facilities and the internet, Ms Mercy Dakogri, a Girl-Child Coordinator with the Commu­nity Development Alliance, has said.

She made this observation in an interview with The Spec­tator recently.

According to Ms Dakogri, in the Upper West Region, issues such as poor mobile network connectivity, unavailability of mobile network, inability to afford smart phones and other gadgets that enable internet connectivity, among others have contributed to widening the gap between the rural and the urban folks.

She said the inequalities are believed to worsen when girls are involved because many of the rural girls are unable to access and use the internet in rural areas as most of them do not own smart phones and other internet gadgets.

Ms Dakogri, has therefore called on government and stakeholders to bridge the digital gap between the rural and urban folks in this regard.

She said particular effort should be made to bridge the gap between the two areas to ensure that internet and ICT facilities were made avail­able to indigenes, particular­ly girls.

According to her, most of the rural communities did not have network connectiv­ity and said those that did, were still faced with network challenges and poor internet connectivity.

She explained that aside the network connectivity, access to basic computers even at the school level in most rural communities in the region was a challenge and prevented children from having access to ICT facilities early enough.

“In this day and era, many schools in rural communities do not have computers or ICT labs so pupils go through the entire basic education and have no idea how a computer even looks like and these are people who are going to com­pete on the job market with others from bigger towns and cities”, she lamented.

She expressed the belief that deliberate effort to make ICT facilities available at least will be a starting point for bridging the gap as it will ensure that rural folks have access to ICT equip­ment.

This according to her will help the country meet the goal 10 of the sustainable development goals which focused on reducing inequal­ities in all spheres of life and called for efforts to bridge the wide ICT gaps between the country’s rural and urban folks.

She was of the opinion that if government and other development agents invested in ICT and internet in rural areas, it would lead to inno­vative ways of thinking and doing things so that people did not depend on govern­ment for employment.

 From Lydia Darlington

Fordjour, Wa