[WSIS CS-Plenary] WSIS Africa Regional Meeting 2005 Launched in Accra (fwd)

[Marianne Seger]

Dear All,
just to to let you know... - about the infomation I received via AYI.

MARIANNE SEGER
e-mail: maseger at t-online.de

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From: "Leopold Leslie Lanquaye Armah" <armahleo at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: WSIS Africa Regional Meeting 2005  Launched in Accra

Dear All, For further information please check
www.wsisaccra2005.gov.gh:
   
   Mr. Albert Ken-Dapaah, Minister of Communication on
Wednesday charged the media to play a lead role in the
propagation of messages about Information and
Communication Technology (ICT) since it has the
ability to reach greater proportion of the populace.
He said the rapidly changing socio-economic
environment in a global scale, has become more
important to engender public discussions on issues
with respect to ICT on the global level.

Mr. Ken-Dapaah was speaking at a press launch of the
Africa Regional preparatory conference of the World
Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) to be held in
Accra-Ghana in February next year. The Accra
conference will form the rallying point for Africa to
build consensus on the issues that would be discussed
during the second phase of the WSIS at Tunis in
November 2005.

The idea of Information Society came up at the
conference of World leaders in Geneva 2003, which took
into consideration, measures to be taken to ensure
that emerging economies benefited from the full
potentials of ICT in their developmental agenda. He
noted that the media is considered as a key policy
stakeholder in the information society and that
efforts were being made to ensure its effective
participatory role in building an information society.

Mr. Ken-Dapaah observed that for developing country to
successfully reach the positive side of the digital
divide, it would depend on the extent the media
disseminated ICT messages at national, organizational
and individual levels. He noted that Ghana has a
vibrant media and that government, on its part would
work out measures to ensure that the media diverted
some attention towards the ICT sector. Mr. Ken-Dapaah
said the Geneva summit agreed on specific targets to
be taken into accounts before the establishment of
national strategies.

The strategies included measures to connect villages
to ICT, establish community access points and connect
public libraries, post offices, cultural centres and
museums to ICT. It further involved connecting
Universities and Schools to ICT, local and central
government department as well as health centres and
hospitals.

He said currently efforts are underway to put an
action plan into gear to find out areas of Internet
Governance and financing mechanisms needed to employ
ICT to hasten the achievement of the Millennium
Development Goals.

event site is under construction at
www.wsisaccra2005.gov.gh 
credit : Ghana News Agency 


Leopold L.L. Armah,
African Youth Initiative,
Accra - Ghana