LONDA 2023 report: Ghana's internet penetration reaches 68.2% - Adomonline.com

A total of 10.75 million Ghanaians do not use the internet as at the beginning of last year, the 2023 LONDA Report on the digital rights and inclusion in Africa, published by the Paradigm Initiative (PIN), a Pan African organisation, has revealed.

The LONDA 2023 report features 26 African country reports, authored by digital rights experts from across Africa, and is published annually and monitors the environment, documents violations, and reports on the state of digital rights and inclusion in the continent.

Thobekile Matimbe, Senior Manager, Partnerships and Engagement, PIN, launched the report at the closing session of the 11th edition of the Digital Rights and Inclusive Forum 2024 (DRIF24) in Accra on the theme: “Fostering Rights and Inclusion in the Digital Age”.

Event sponsors included Wikimedia, African Digital Rights Network, Ford Foundation, Luminate, Google, Kingdom of The Netherlands, Mott Foundation, Open Technology Fund (OTF), Internews, Small Media, among others.

According to the report, digital technologies, especially mobile phones, and the internet had become indispensable tools for participation in society and the economy, and urged the government to do more to improve internet penetration in the country.

The report further recommended a multi-stakeholder approach to tackling the digital rights situation in the country, saying the approach would address issues such as internet and mobile phone affordability through subsidies, special pricing, financing schemes, and other innovations.

It also called for the development, review, and updated comprehensive legislation that addressed digital rights, including privacy protection, freedom of expression, and access to information.