Ghana Graduates Conference

An Ethnographic Study of a Popular Slum community in Ghana- Nima

Cyber-crime as an area of study has received little or no attention in developing countries round the world where significant proportions of these Internet crimes take place. One of the major issues battling the advancement of Information and Communication Technology in developing countries in general has been the non-existing regulatory frameworks to control and monitor the advancement ICT in respective countries.

In Ghana, like many other developing countries, enforcement and regulation of laws in this area has been a daunting task. Even though Ghana is among the very few African countries with a draft policy on ICT, the issue with regulation has been viewed with lots of scepticism in many quarters.

Notwithstanding these setbacks, Governments of Ghana is still poised to ensure equity in the implementation of its ICT programs and policies to facilitate the development of its economy. Government over the years have come to the realization that before their economies can reap total benefit of global economic business exchange in this 21st century, they will have to bring their segmented economies onto a global platform through ICT.

Nonetheless, the indispensable nature of ICT in Ghana's economic development has triggered series of policy formulation in other sectors of the economy. National ICT policies formulated in 2005 did set in motion a good basis for the development of ICT in all sectors; education, health care delivery, governance etc.

Despite the great strides made by national governments to ensure equitable access to ICT infrastructure, much attention is not paid to the threat these technologies pose to national security and state sovereignty. African Cyber crime Enterprises, for that matter West African Cyber crime syndicates are among one of the most active and vibrant crime syndicates in the world. Significant among these are the Nigerian Cyber crime Enterprises.

"If we seek to proliferate ICT usage, then we should be able to put in place the needed measure to ensure that it does not become a tool for crime but rather a tool for development."

This study which was initiated to examine the Ghanaian aspect of this emerging social menace and how state institutions are gearing up to manage and control incidence and also to further examine how is affecting Ghana’s Internet trust relationship with the rest of the globe.

Keywords: internet trust, cyber crime enterprises

I have been teaching ICT related course for the past for the past 13 years. And have submited conferences papers in cyber crime research and have been accepted for presentations in UK and Brazil. Below are the related links to my conference paper sites:

• http://www.canterbury.ac.uk/news/newsrelease.asp?newsPk=1186
• http://iccrime.com.br/isscrim2009/novo_eng/conferencistas.php

I have been teaching at the ICT Directorate for the past 4 years and have tutored close to 4000 undergraduate students from the University.I  have initiated a number of private ICT related project in the area of SMS in Education in higher education and Affordable infrastructure for Rural ICT in Education. And I look forward to be a leading researcher and expert in ICT related issues in Africa and in the developing world.