Former MD of Letshego, and Founder of SME crowdfunding platform Pesewa Rising, Arnold Parker has suggested that the Ghana ICT Hub set to be built by MTN Ghana at the Accra Digital Center (ADC), should be relocated outside of Accra for maximum impact.
He believes Accra has already seen a lot of development and the hub can serve the country a better purpose when located outside of the national capital. Moreover, the proposed location of the hub, ADC, will only make the vehicle traffic situation around Kwame Nkrumah Circle worse.
In an email response to Techfocus24, Arnold Parker wrote “The Accra Digital Centre is in a traffic node and although the centre has a beautiful vision, its location poses more traffic challenges for workers in the city who go through Circle.”
The Ghana ICT Hub forms part of a US$25 million MTN Ghana promised to spend on various initiatives aimed at facilitating and deepening the country’s digital transformation agenda by providing digital skills and creating relevant jobs for national development.
The CEO of the telecoms giant, the Communications and Digitalization Minister and other collaborators cut the sod on Wednesday to mark the commencement of the hub’s construction over a period of 18 months.
The Ghana ICT Hub is designed to provide 4,000 square metres of space with ancillary facilities and unique features. When completed, it is expected to train over 200,000 youth in ICT and digital skills and generate more than 100,000 jobs within the first three years.
The hub will be an ultra-modern office facility, providing office spaces and meeting venues for more than one hundred (100) Tech companies which will incubate new ideas and innovations, driving the start-up buzz in the hub after completion. It will also create an ICT ecosystem in the health, agriculture and education sectors.
Arnold Parker believes given the fact that ICT and digital are growth sectors, which can quickly create lots of jobs, the Accra Digital Centre will not be able to contain the exponential growth the hub is expected to bring.
“We must use the ICT and Digital sectors to develop other regional capitals. Regional capitals can be growth poles for specific sectors of the economy. Other regional capitals will benefit tremendously from the presence of a digital hub,” he argued.
The Pesewa Rising Founder noted that due to the advancement of Internet connectivity, a digital hub can be placed anywhere in the country. But he proposed that the three most preferred areas for a digital hub could be Ho in the Volta Region, Koforidua in the Eastern Region or Cape Coast in the Central Region.
He explained that those three regional capitals are closer to Accra and young people can easily relocate there when an ICT Hub is in any of those locations.
Moreover, Arnold Parker noted that there is enough land in those three regional capitals to accommodate growth in the digital sector, saying that other ancillary industries like real estate, education, agriculture, retail shops and others can easily grow as a result of the hub.
“These regional capitals also have very beautiful and scenic views and will be great locations for new industries as well. Over time the giants in the industry MTN, AirtelTigo, and Telecel/Vodafone can also consider relocating their head offices there so that we build a truly vibrant ICT City,” he suggested.
