The Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, has urged Vodafone Ghana to collaborate with other organisations to extend the teaching and learning of Information Communication Technology (ICT) to deprived communities.

He said the establishment of ICT training infrastructure in rural communities was the surest way to empower the youth in those areas to benefit and take advantage of the numerous opportunities it offered to improve and transform themselves and the society they lived in.

The Asantehene cited the Otumfuo Charity Foundation, a community development organisation which had an ICT programme, and said that could be a starting point for a possible partnership with Vodafone to roll out training programmes to help school children in rural communities.

“It is something which I think we can take up”, he told a delegation of management of Vodafone Ghana, during a courtesy call on him at the Manhyia palace in Kumasi.

The delegation was at the palace to wish the monarch well on his 68th birthday, and also inform him of the impending golf tournament to be held in Kumasi.

The Asantehene said the Foundation had a mobile van that visited remote areas and hinterlands that has no electricity to teach children about ICT, adding that Vodafone support would help make greater impact.

Ms Yolanda Cuba, the Chief Executive, Vodafone Ghana, re-affirmed the Company’s desire to build closer collaboration with stakeholders in the Ashanti region and said the annual golf tournament was one of the strategies.

There are also business clinics, health screening exercises, digital training for kids among others.

She said that was a way of giving back to the people and forging stronger relationships with their customers.