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tsoboi to Enhance Development
Feb 14, 2012 (Public Agenda/All Africa Global Media via COMTEX) --
The Ghana Development Information Portal (www.tsoboi.com) has been launched as one of the knowledge products within the Sustainable Rural Livelihoods Project (SRLP) to make accessing and sharing of locally relevant information easier, through the use of mobile phones.
SRLP emphasizes the empowering of communities and improving livelihood through focusing on the capacities, assets and activities of individuals and their communities.
The aim of the Portal is to ensure that Ghanaian citizens can share and have continuous access to relevant development information to facilitate and accelerate poverty reduction and to protect the vulnerable within a decentralized democratic environment.
The Portal was put together by the Africa 2000 Network in response to a requests made by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Regional Bureau of Africa.
The initiative came as part of some solutions for the SRLP which the UNDP established in partnership with the Government of Ghana, to tackle poverty through the increase of productive capacity.
At a launching of the Portal organised by Africa 2000 Network in collaboration with the UNDP in Accra last Thursday, the Chief Director at the Ministry of Information, Mr Victor X. K. Senaya, in a speech read for him indicated that the portal would be managed by the information service and that the ministry was devoted to providing information that would help people in the rural areas access Information and Communication Technology (ICT).
He bemoaned that problem of poverty was as a result of some basic issues such as the lack of relevant online content for rural Ghanaians.
?Although there is a great deal of information from development partners, civil society organizations and extension service providers, most of this is not available online. The absence of data and an information base at the local and indeed community level complicates ascertaining the status of the MDGs [Millennium Development Goals] and the monitoring of progress in achieving them at the district and community level, he added.
According to Mr Senaya, the portal was to enable the ordinary Ghanaian to among other things access information through the use of a mobile phone, to identify mediators in communities who can access and share information on behalf of their communities, to feed their Community Information Centers (CICs) and district information.
It is also to provide updated market prices of agricultural products to farmers and consumers of farm products.
He noted: National Information Service had already adopted the GDIP and it is expected that together with the other stakeholders including the Ministry of Communication, Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, National Development Planning Commission, UNDP, Africa 2000 Network and other development partners, it would be harnessed and promoted to positively impact the lives of ordinary citizens. Within the broad framework of achieving the Millennium Development Goals, ICT is being deployed at the CICs as tools for poverty reduction.
Launching the portal, the Deputy Minister for Communication, Hon. Ernest Attuquaye, acknowledged the need to integrate the country with the new emerging economic order where information and knowledge were fundamental to achieving competitiveness.
He recommended that there should be a constant monitoring and evaluation of the initiative and the need to consider flexibility in the implementation particularly considering that the level of ICT literacy in rural communities might be a bit lower.
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