Ghana has been re-elected as a council member of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), to continue contributing its quota to the United Nation’s specialized agency that oversees global telecommunication operations.
The election for the Council membership, which was held on Monday, was the high point of the ongoing ITU Plenipotentiary Conference 2022 in Bucharest, Romania.
Ghana secured 145 votes and ranked 2nd among the 13 countries elected to the
Council from Region D in Africa, which is the highest number of votes that Ghana has secured at an ITU Council election.
The ITU Council acts as the Union’s governing body in the interval between
Plenipotentiary Conferences, held every four years.
Its role is to consider broad telecommunication policy issues to ensure that the Union’s activities, policies, and strategies fully respond to today’s dynamic, rapidly changing telecommunications environment.
The Minister for Communication and Digitalisation, Mrs Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, who led Ghana’s electoral campaign pledged that Ghana would continue to make a valuable contribution to the ITU council while making sure that it provides its service to telecommunication in a resourceful, open, and futuristic way.
She explained that the government has already done a lot through initiatives such as the innovative Rural Telephony Project and Sectoral Computer Emergency Response Teams (CERTS) to secure cyberspace amongst others.
In a related development, Rev. Ing. Edmund Yirenkyi Fianko, the Acting Director of Engineering at the National Communications Authority (NCA) was elected to ITU’s Radio Regulations Board (RRB) for the 2023-2026 term.
In total, forty-eight ITU Member States were elected to the Council ITU Radio Regulations Board (RRB).