As part of its mandate to promote Trade in Services as a veritable Ghanaian export offering across the world, Ghana Export Promotion Authority (GEPA) in collaboration with the Accra Digital Centre has organised an infotech fair with the prime objective of showcasing the tech offerings and solutions of Ghanaian origin to the whole world with particular emphasis on audience from the African continent.
The fair which took place on the 26th and the 27th of August 2021, was under the theme “GROWING OUR OWN: THE NEED TO USE AFRICAN TECH SOLUTIONS”. It brought together 37 tech companies from various fields: Agritech, Fintech, eGovernance, Edutech were some of the services on offer.
The Chief Executive Officer of GEPA, Dr. Afua Asabea Asare in her welcome address intimated that GEPA’s mandate includes the promotion of trade in services in external markets. So, the fair was in response to the current need and in furtherance of the Authority’s mandate. She emphasized the Authorities readiness to collaborate with actors in the export space to position the NTEs in the total national export basket.
The special guest of honour, Hon. Alan Kyerematen, the minister for trade and industry was represented by Dr. Fareed Arthur, the Senior Technical Advisor at the National AfCFTA Coordination Office. In his remark, he reiterated the government’s commitment to providing the enabling trade regime for IT and IT-enabled services to flourish. He touched on the AfCFTA and the establishment of the AfCFTA coordination office which is meant to solely ensure Ghana takes full advantage of the AfCFTA.
Deputy Minister for Communications and Digitalization, Ms. Ama Pomaa Boateng in the stead of the substantive minister, Ursula Owusu Ekuful in her keynote address indicated that technological developments and advancement all over the world have strongly influenced the growth of the services sector in an unparalleled manner. She further indicated that the modern state depends heavily on Information Technology for economic development, and that services such as Fintech, EHealth have seen a significant growth. She emphasized the government’s untiring effort at developing the burgeoning sector into a Forex generating sector.
