 We're here at the ITU studio, and I'm very pleased to be joined today by Dr. Amani Bwama, who is Minister of Communications for Ghana. Minister, thank you very much indeed for being with us today. You're welcome. I'd like to start off by talking about Ghana and its presence at ITU Telecom World in 2013 with the National Pavilion, and I wanted to find out what are the main benefits for you in taking part in this event, and what's your key message? Taking in Ghana contributes immensely to our GDP and our national development for that matter. We see it as a driver, as a catalyst, and also as an enabler of all other sectors of our national program. As a result of that, we have over the years taken such conferences very, very seriously, and this year's one in Bangkok is not going to be a deception. We intend to showcase some of the innovations that we have been pursuing back home in Ghana. One of it has to do with when government decided to distribute laptop computers to students. There was also a deliberate policy to ensure that at least the laptop computers were assembled in Ghana, and it's a Ghanaian company that is assembling this, and we intend to showcase some of them. As a result of this intervention, the company has been able to progress to the level of also assembling tablets, and we will showcase some of these as well. As a result also of the various interactions that we have had with all the cherished stakeholders at such conferences, we have been able to ensure some modifications in our telecommunication policy, with new innovations coming up and all of that. Mobile number portability is one of seconds, and we intend to also share the success story and the challenges as well with participants. I was going to ask you, how can ICTs directly benefit the daily lives of people living in Ghana? ICT, like I earlier indicated, is an enabler, and these days one can hardly appreciate life without, let's say, a mobile phone, and of course smart phones or a computer, because the first thing that even somebody who is living in the remotest part of Ghana want to hold is the mobile phone as soon as the person wakes up, and the figures are quite interesting in Ghana. A population of 24.5 million and the total number of SIM card subscription is 26.5 million. What it means is that the SIM card subscription far outstrives the total population by 2 million. So it's a clear indication that people have already adapted to the use of mobile phones. Let me be quick to add that it doesn't mean that every Ghanaian has access to a mobile phone. What it means is that there are some people who have more than one SIM card, but by and large I will put the penetration figure at around 16 million for a population of 24.5 million. So with this kind of penetration through e-commerce, through mHealth, through even other social interactions via the mobile phone, it saves people the time, it saves people the risk of even traveling either by road or by air or by river or by sea to get to other parts of the country and other parts of the world for some of the things that previously you may have had to move from one location to the other to pursue. Now it's very much in terms of mobile deployments. I wanted to also ask you what do you see the government's role is in terms of mobile deployment and also in terms of the broadband rollout, which of course you're planning very much in Ghana. Our commitment to universal access is unflinching and we are not wavering at all in that. We have the Ghana investment fund for electronic communication, which is ensuring that we deploy cell sites in the remotest part of the country. I will say not yet Uhuru, but we have a coverage rate that is quite appreciable. What we are working towards is to have universal coverage for the country and this is going to be an interaction between the private sector and also the government side. In the area of broadband, I want to draw the distinction between fixed broadband and also mobile broadband. Looking at the area of fixed broadband, we have enormous amount of optic fiber inland that is running through almost every district capital in the country. Still inland, looking at the eastern part of the country, that is a place that has some deficiency and we have made a very profound intervention. That is a 37 million euro project, which is ensuring that 780 kilometers of optic fiber is being laid through 110 communities and these are passing through the Volta region, the Northern region, the Upper East region. It is our hope that when this is done, we are going to ensure that all these 110 communities are going to benefit from it. As we speak now, we have five submarine cables in the country and also in the area of mobile broadband. We already have our 2G and our 3G systems in place, but we are migrating all our Weimar sites. So far we are 29 Weimar sites. We are migrating all these Weimar sites, which are 4G to the superior form of the 4G, which is a long-term evolution, LTE, so that we will be able to take advantage of the opportunities, the high resolution, the high picture quality, the high sound quality that LTE offers. I hope that within the next 12 months, we will be able to deploy as many as 90 of these LTE sites. Now you mentioned M Health. What are the major opportunities and challenges that you face in Ghana? The challenges are that of a system that has been used to the manual ways of handling issues. But Ghanians learn very fast and Ghanians easily adapt. And so we will count on that trait of Ghanians to ensure that you will be able to migrate fully into the application of M Health and for that matter, E Health. One of the challenges also has to do with interoperability. As a result of the fact that we are establishing our enterprise architecture, there have been bits and pieces of interventions that cannot easily communicate with each other. And we are working very hard at ensuring that interoperability becomes the order of the day and not the exception. What also we are looking at has to do with harnessing the total potential of E Health and M Health to be able to answer the question of the rural-urban disparity in terms of doctor-patient ratio, nurse-patient ratio and also in some specific disciplines. And I'll cite one example. Radiologists are not too common even in the advanced countries. And so the very few realities that we have in Ghana are largely in the two major cities, Kumase and Akra, Akra being the capital city of Ghana. What happens if a doctor elsewhere in the country meets the intervention of a radiologist? And if the actual film is ready or an ultrasound scan report or the film is ready or an MRI film is ready, we are working very hard in ensuring that we will be able to dispatch these films and documents electronically to the radiologists wherever they find themselves in the country for them to be able to give their feedbacks on it and recommend further actions that are to be taken by the doctors who will find themselves in the remote areas. By so doing, we will not have moved the radiologists from the cities but we would have migrated their brains to the hinterlands and the rural communities. Call it brain gain or brain circulation and you will not be wrong. I wanted to ask you, Ghana has been a long-standing partner of telecom events. Why is the conversation at World 2013 matter to Ghana? It matters so much to us. It's an opportunity for governments, industry and academia to fuse ideas on one platform and such unique opportunities are very hard to come by. But that is the only way to ensure sustainable development. Also because industry will be there, the private sector for that matter. It is also an opportunity for government of Ghana to be able to solicit for the needed foreign direct investment into our country. And it also will serve as an opportunity for us to showcase the innovations that we have undertaken over the past one year in Ghana. Minister, thank you very much indeed for being here today. You're welcome.