Dr Joe Anokye, NCA win big at 13th Ghana Information Technology & Telecom Awards

The National Communications Authority (NCA) has received three honours at the 13th Ghana Information Technology and Telecom Awards (GIITA).

The NCA won Regulator of the Year and Regulatory Team of the Year, while its Director-General, Dr Joe Anokye, picked the Telecom Man of the Year accolade at Ghana’s biggest tech industry awards.

Popularly referred to as the ‘Oscars’ of Ghana’s ICT and Telecom Industry, the GITTA, organised by Instinctwave, publishers of the Digital Economy Magazine, celebrates business entities and individuals driving digitisation and innovation in Ghana.

GIITA recognises, rewards, and showcases individuals and organisations pioneering ICT initiatives to drive innovation in Ghana.

The NCA has been at the forefront of several policies and interventions to deliver its supervisory mandate of the communications sector in Ghana and was acknowledged on the awards night held at the Movenpick Hotel in Accra on Friday, June 7.

Since he was appointed the Director General of NCA, Dr. Anokye has been recognised for his exceptional leadership in managing Ghana’s communications industry.

Through purposeful planning, teamwork, thorough preparation, and test runs, he has overseen the widespread deployment of tools and systems to improve the NCA’s performance in licensing, monitoring, and enforcement, which are the authority’s core statutory functions.

This has led to the successful completion of numerous projects aimed at transforming the NCA’s internal processes and improving the performance of Ghana’s communications industry.

Some of the key industry interventions include the following:

1. Directives to MNOs in 2020 requiring them to establish and maintain physical cable connections to at least three (3) submarine cable providers for redundancy and resilience to avert future internet disruptions. This directive averted a complete internet blackout during the March 14 2024 incident affecting four (4) submarine cables connecting Ghana to the Internet. His steady leadership during the crisis led to a rapid restoration of Internet services before the repair of the faulty cables.
2. Introduction of UMTS 900 (U-900) to enable mobile operators to deploy 3G services in their 900MHz frequency assignments to expand and improve data services in the country.
3. Classification and declaration of MTN as a Significant market Power (SMP) to establish the basis for the application of remedial measures to correct imbalances in the telecom market and to protect competition. Some of the remedies implemented include asymmetric interconnection in favour of ‘smaller’ operators, technology neutrality, national roaming, regulation of the tariffs of the SMP, etc.
   4. Successful execution of the SIM card re-registration exercise in Ghana, which established a secure SIM database.
4. Introduction of Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) through a pilot project in two cities, Accra and Kumasi, making Ghana a pioneer of DAB in West Africa and the fourth country in Africa to deploy the digital sound broadcasting technology.
5. Introduction of new technical conditions to enable the use of adjacent frequency channels for FM radio broadcasting in the same coverage area. This helped to alleviate the frequency constraints in the major cities of the country.
6. Development of a satellite licensing framework to cater for the new services offered by operators in the non-geostationary satellite orbit (NGSO).
7. Establishment of a Broadcasting Monitoring Centre to crack down on unlawful broadcasting activities in Ghana.
8. Collaborations with the Ministry of Communications and other international entities to expand Ghana’s internet connection capacity.
9. The implementation of National Roaming by Mobile Network Operators (MNOs), supervised by the NCA, and advanced collaborations to deploy roaming services to other African countries to relieve Ghanaians who travel across the continent.