Ghana to manufacture handsets

BUSINESS

By Nana Appiah Acquaye, Accra, Ghana

One of Ghana’ s young, vibrant and innovative ICT companies, rlg Communications, has commissioned the first-ever mobile phone and laptop Assembly Plant in Accra, Ghana.

This is in line with the company’ s far-reaching goals, which include building a state of the art local assembly plant, training tens of thousands of youths in applied ICT skills and growing its market dominance to over 60%.

The company already offers several locally-made handsets to the market, and aims to grow its range and market dominance.

The manufacturing facility commissioning ceremony in Ghana was attended a high-powered government delegation led by the Vice President, H.E John Dramani Mahama.

Speaking on the theme: “ Economic empowerment, generating sustainable employment for the youth through investment in applied ICT,” the Chief Executive Officer of rlg, Roland Agambire, noted that rlg Communication has a vision to empower the youth of Ghana and elsewhere in Africa with the applied ICT skills needed to boost Africa’ s economic emancipation.

He said although Ghana is endowed with numerous resources, these resources have failed to provide the country the needed geometric growth to economic prosperity, because of its weak technological base.

Agambire highlighted rlg Communication’ s vision for the year 2012, which includes a plan to
•       Set up an ultra- modern manufacturing plant using by-products of downstream oil industry as the main input to manufacture all hardware component requirements
•       Establish a technological research centre to train and export technological expertise to the rest of the world and
•       Offer employment to over 30 000 youths under the ICT module of the National Youth Employment Programme and, by extension, give almost a million Ghanaians their daily bread.

The CEO of rlg lauded the Ministry of Environmental, Science and Technology for its invaluable support in making the One Child, One Lap-top project achievable in Ghana.

The Vice President, who officially cut the sod for the opening of the new ultra-modern manufacturing plant, praised the CEO of rlg communication for taking such a bold step to level the digital playing field, and expressed the hope that other local ICT firms would emulate it.

He said the Better Ghana Agenda ICT Project could not be achieved without the support and participation of local IT companies and he pledged government's support for the development and growth of ICT in Ghana.