The Director-General for the Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre, Collins Yeboah-Afari, has said that data on Extended Reality (XR) shows that more than half of Africa’s population does not enjoy a fully digital experience, and that is why the Government of Ghana, through its various ministries and implementing agencies, is championing the Digitalisation Agenda in Ghana.
During his welcome address on Wednesday (7 December), he explained that the theme for this year’s conference will “trigger conversations around Augmented Reality (AR), Mixed Reality (MR), and Virtual Reality (VR) technologies and how they can help the digital economy as the world gradually comes out of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Ghana is the first West African country to host the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) Academic Conference Kaleidoscope to facilitate international connectivity in the communications network.
According to Yeboah-Afari, studies have also shown that connecting more people to augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (MR), and virtual reality (VR) technologies, all under the umbrella of extended reality (XR), could transform everything from healthcare and education to sports and tourism, among other sectors of the continent and the world.
“To do this, the right technologies must be deployed, and capacity building in advanced and exponential technologies must be done.”
“This is why we at the Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT (GI-KACE), as part of our mandate, are concerned about training people in data science, artificial intelligence (AI), and the Internet of Things (IoT), among others, while advancing research in these areas,” he added.
In his speech, he revealed that members of GI-KACE are the capacity-building development agency of the Ministry of Communications and Digitalisation and have prioritized efforts to help create awareness in the ecosystem as well as build capacity to help build a critical mass of talent and help the economy that MOCD is leading.
“Like the former Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, once said, the future belongs to you, but it can only belong to you if you participate and take charge,” he said.
He then encouraged participants to build relationships and establish partnerships and connections in the public and private sectors, academia, and industry to advance extended reality (XR) and boost the quality of their experiences, as the government champions the Digitalisation agenda in Ghana.
Source: Daily Mail GH
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