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JOURNAL OF TELECOMMUNICATIONS, VOLUME 28, ISSUE 2, DECEMBER 2014

Rural Area Development and Society

Performance Improvement in Ghana
Sudhakar Murugesan, Nivash Thirunavukarasu and Nicholas Asabere
Abstract:
This study examined the performance and future improvements of Ghanaian society. Moores law,
Amdahls law and Regression analysis was the major tools used to analyze the data collected. The
development of computer information and communication technology has continually affected the creation
of new applications based on emergent technologies. The dark side of Moores law is our societys
insatiable need to constantly upgrade our computing devices. As per Moores law demonstrates the
potential benefits of reusing mobile phones by analyzing their design for accumulate energy. The main
aim of this research paper is to improve rural people life style in Ghana and Ghana economy. The first
wave of these efforts is commonly identified as Green computing where the emphasis has been
primarily minimizing power usage for datacenters and technical equipments. As part of ensuring
productivity in the both urban and especially the rural areas of Ghana we propose an Electronic pay- in
system (E-pay-in). where a customer of a bank just needs to reload a recharge card to our system and
the said amount shall be credited to his bank account of the respective bank of the customer.

Keywords: Moores Law, Green IT, Amdahls Law

Introduction:
Mainly

growth in telecom networks, while ensuring that

information

communications

the 2.5 percent of global emissions does not

technology (ICT) industry alone accounts for

significantly increase over the coming years.

about 2% or 860 million tones of the worlds

Many a time, people in the rural areas of Ghana

greenhouse

main

travel some distances to transact business with

contributing sectors within the ICT industry

their banks which affect production. On the

include the energy requirements of PCs and

other hand, some banks have choose to offer a

monitors (40%), data Centers about 23% and

door-tp-door services. Where sometimes bank

fixed and mobile telecommunications contribute

officers either defraud or run away with their

about 24% of the total emissions. Compared to

customers money. The E-pay-in system is a

the other sectors such as travel and transport,

system that interoperates with both banks and

construction and energy production, the ICT

telecommunication service providers.

sector

Scope:

is

gas

and

emissions.

relatively

The

energy-lean

with

telecommunications contributing just 0.7 percent

or about 230 million tones of green house gas
emissions. The challenge for the banking and
telecom service providers, telecom equipment
manufacturers and the government is to pursue

We would measures and will be undertaken to

reduce the banking and telecom sector footprint
under the following categories:

Adoption of energy efficient equipment

and innovative technologies

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JOURNAL OF TELECOMMUNICATIONS, VOLUME 28, ISSUE 2, DECEMBER 2014

Infrastructure Sharing

A. Double Spending :

Use of Renewable sources of energy

Must allow spending of e-cash only once,

Better network planning: more outdoor BTS,

safeguards must be in place to prevent

less BTS.

counterfeiting.
B. Transferability

Existing system:
Currently the best way rural peoples enjoy
banking service conveniently is the door-to-door
services(SUSU) which has various demerits.
Now the real identity and the credibility of these
transactions are unsafe placing the customer at
vulnerability.

It should be independent and portable i.e. it

should be freely transferable between any two
parties regardless of network, software/hardware
or storage mechanism. And most importantly it
should be convenient.
C. Divisibility

With divisibility we mean the ability to make

Proposed Method:
With the E-pay-in system, the customer only
have to buy a recharge card and load it with
short code(eg: *133*card number#). When this
is done the equivalent amount will be credited to
the customers bank account at same time
customer also get a text message from the bank
confirming the transactions. This method is
made feasible by mapping the bank account to
the customers phone number.
MOBILE MICRO MONEY:

change. So micro money will come in rupees or

smaller denominations that can make highvolume, small-value transactions on the Mobile
phone practical. Mobile micro money will be
stored like fungible talktime, which is separate
from the air talk time, provided already by the
MNO. MNO would issue micro money to the
individual in exchange for cash deposit, which is
held in an account under the individuals name.
Individuals can spend the micro money for all
kinds of transactions, if they know the UID
number of other party with whom they are

Individuals will use micro money in place of

hard cash at all the access points to make
purchases, to transfer money etc, This would
mean replacing hard cash with micro money in
the hands of people. Therefore it is important
that micro money should satisfy some basic
properties of physical money to be robust and
fool proof. Some important characteristics of
micro money should be

transacting.

Transactions

like

buying

commodities, buying airtalktime, paying utility

bills, transferring money to other mobile micro
money accounts etc can be easily done.
Individuals can access their mobile micro money
accounts using a simple SMS based application
on their mobile phones.

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JOURNAL OF TELECOMMUNICATIONS, VOLUME 28, ISSUE 2, DECEMBER 2014

Opening of Mobile Micro Money

Step 2:

Any individual interested in opening

Retailer/Correspondent sends the

information electronically to the MNO.

mobile micro money account has to approach

Step 3:

the retail shop, working on behalf of MNO or

customers details to UIDAI server through

the correspondent of MNO. The necessary

SWITCH.

documents to open mobile micro money account

Step 4:

should be similar and not as stringent as the

customer with the UIDAI Server.

current KYC norms of banks.

Step 5: Mobile micro money account is created

Architecture and Design of proposed system:

by MNO.

MNO sends request to verify the

MNO verifies the UID number of the

Step 6: MNO stores the mobile micro money

Customer

account details, customers mobile number and

UID number in the Account Mapper.

Step7

Step 1

Step 7: Both the customer as well as the

retailer/correspondent is intimated via message

Retailer/

on their mobiles.

Corresponde
nt
Stp:6 Stp:2

Cash Deposit for Mobile Micro Money :

Step: 5
Stp:3

MNO

UDI

Switch
Stp:5

Customer

Step:4

Stp:4

Step:1
Retailer/
Correspondent

Step:3

Account

Step:2
MNO

Mapping
mapping
Fig: 1Activate Mobile Micro Money account

Fig 2: Cash Deposit for Mobile Micro Money

Consider the case when retailer and customer

Step 1: Customer has to approach the nearest

belong to the same MNO. Following are the

retailer shop or the correspondent of MNO to

steps involved in the process of depositing cash.

enable the mobile micro money account.

Step 1. Retailer gets the information about UID

Customer gives his UID number, mobile number

number and the amount to be transferred from

and

customer.

other

KYC

details

retailer/Correspondent of MNO.

to

the

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JOURNAL OF TELECOMMUNICATIONS, VOLUME 28, ISSUE 2, DECEMBER 2014

Step 2. Retailer sends the information to MNO

Step 4: An SMS is sent to both the beneficiary

through the SMS based application.

and the customer about the transaction status.

Step 3. MNO has the database of all the

Now consider the scenario when the beneficiary

individuals who have enabled mobile micro

and the customer belong to different MNOs.

money accounts under it, by using UID number,

Literature survey on Ghana population:

MNO gets the details of mobile micro money

account number of customer.

The final results of the 2010 Population and

Step 4. It then performs the appropriate action of

Housing Census (PHC) showed that the total

debiting retailers micro money account and

population of Ghana as at 26th September, 2010

crediting customers micro money account.

was 24,658,823. The results indicated that

Step 5. An SMS is send to both customer and

Ghanas population increased by 30.4 percent

over the 2000 population figure of 18,912,079.

retailer involved in the transaction.

Cash Transfers in Mobile micro Money

The recorded annual intercensal growth rate in

2010 was 2.5 percent as against 2.7 percent

Sender
Step:4

recorded in 2000.
The results revealed that there were 12,633,978

Step:1

females and 12,024,845 males. This implied that

MNO
Step:3

Step:2

Receiv
er

Fig 3: Transaction belong to the same MNO

Step 1: Customer enters the UID number of the
beneficiary and the amount to be transferred, in
the SMS based application (which is installed on
the mobile phone).
Since the beneficiary also belongs to the same
MNO, MNO gets the details of the beneficiary
like micro money account number directly, by
doing query on its own database using UID
number.
Step 2: MNO debits customers mobile micro
money account.
Step 3: MNO Credits beneficiary mobile micro
money account.

females

constituted

51.2

percent

of

the

population and males 48.8 percent, resulting in

sex ratio of 95 males to 100 females. It also
showed increase in population density from 79
people per square km in 2000 to 103 per square
km in 2010.
From the final results, Greater Accra (16.3%)
and Ashanti (19.4%) regions had the greater
share of the population while upper East (4.2%)
and Upper West (2.8%) regions had the smaller
share of the population. According to the
national population projection, the current
population of Ghana in 2014 is estimated to be
27,043,093 with 48.97% being representing
male population and 51.03 representing the
female population. The population growth rate is
fairly high in Ghana.

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JOURNAL OF TELECOMMUNICATIONS, VOLUME 28, ISSUE 2, DECEMBER 2014

Year
2010

Male
12,024,845

Female
12,633,978

Total
24,658,823

leader

2011

12,319,770

12,915,498

25,235,268

market share.

2012

12,621,125

13,203,795

25,824,920

2013

12,928,916

13,498,844

26,427,760

2014

13,242,709

13,800,384

27,043,093

with

subscriber

base

of

11,615,801 representing 45.33% of total

Vodafone's subscriber base increased to

5,175,377 which represent 20.20 % of
total market share.

Tigo had a marginal subscriber base

decrease, closing at 3,673,934 which
represents 14.34 % of the market while
Airtel increased its subscriber base to

30000000

Year

25000000
20000000

3,132,615 representing 12.23% of the

total market share.

male

15000000

10000000

current subscriber base of 1,578,446

Female

5000000

GLO decreased its subscriber base; its

represents 6.16 % of the total market

0
1 2 3 4 5 6

share.

Total
PopulaMon

Expresso

though,

decreased

its

subscriber base to 168,572.The 168,572

Bank operators in Ghana:

represents 0.66 % of the total market

share

In Ghana we have different types of banks.

Conclusions:

27 first class banks. (Eg: Ghana

commercial Banks, GT bank, Hfc Bank,
Barclays Bank)
137 Rural banks. (Eg:Atwima Rural
Bank Ltd, Atiwa Rural Bank Ltd,
Bonzali Rural Bank Ltd)

Mobile Network operators in Ghana:

In terms of security, reliability and convenience

are the hall mark of E-pay-in system. E-pay-in
system promotes productivity and hence
improves the economy of Ghana as well as
creating employment. This will also help the
rural people get access to telecommunication
network(s) thereby improving their living
standard.
In
the
end
this
system
utilizestechnology to improve the banking
system in Ghana.

The Total Cellular/Mobile Voice Subscriber

Base in Ghana as at November, 2012 stood at
25,344,745.

MTN had a marginal increase and

maintained its position as the market

References:
1.

Graeme Philipson - founder of

Connection Research to discuss research
he had conducted for Fujitsu on the
present and future of Green IT.

JOURNAL OF TELECOMMUNICATIONS, VOLUME 28, ISSUE 2, DECEMBER 2014

2.

Zhiwei Xu Chinese Academy of

Sciencies, Beijing 0018-9162/12 @
2012 IEEE .

3.

Telecom
Ghana

4.

Bank branch rules by Bank of Ghana

5.

Goodfriend, M. & McCallum, B. T.

(2007), `Banking and interest rates in
monetary policy analysis: A quantitative
exploration', Journal of Monetary
Economics
54(5),
1480{1507.
Hamermesh, D. S. & Pfann, G. A.
(1996), `Adjustment costs in factor
demand',
Journal
of
Economic
Literature 34(3)

6.

Cathles LM, Brown L, Taam M and

Hunter A. (2012). A commentary on
The greenhouse gas footprint of natural
gas in shale formations by R.W.
Howarth, R. Santoro, and A. Ingraffea,
Climatic Change, doi:10.1007/ s10584011-0333-0.

7.

Selected Asian Economies: Real GDP,

Consumer Prices, Current Account
Balance, and Unemployment World
Economic Outlook (WEO) by IMF,
September 2011.

8.

Zhiwei Xu Chinese Academy of

Sciencies, Beijing 0018-9162/12 @
2012 IEEE .

Regulatory

Authority

Of

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