Tech

Meet Prof. Nii Quaynor, The Father of Africa Internet and 3 other men who brought the internet to Ghana 29 years ago

WISDOM K.E HAMMOND 10 months ago

Today, we all enjoy the internet service in Ghana, even with the data interruptions, but sadly, we know little about the four men who brought the internet to Ghana 29 years ago and the sacrifices they made to bring us this far.

Take the dreams, efforts, and sacrifices out, and Ghana would not have become one of the African countries to have access to full internet service in August 1995.

Although August 1995 has been put on record as the month and year Ghana started enjoying full internet services, the foundation blocks were laid through toil from 1993.

Meet Prof. Nii Quaynor, The Father of Africa Internet

The internet we are using today was born in Ghana through Prof. Nii Quaynor and his strong technical team, composed of William Tevie, Joseph Annan, Andy Bulley, and others in the then-Network Computer Systems (NCS), which was registered in 1993.

Today, Knowbody mentions the names of the four big-brained and future-oriented men who brought the internet to Ghana 29 years ago.

Nii Quaynor can be identified as the arrowhead of the internet services in Ghana, but he worked with other technology-minded people to bring us this all-important resource you are using now to read this piece. Without the internet, I will also not be able to share this with you in this manner either. Prof. Nii Quaynor is the Chairman of the Board of Ghana Dot Com.

In 1993, Prof. Nii Quaynor had a rare and intense passion for using technology to deliver solutions.

Read: How internet service in Ghana was 25–29 years ago: You are lucky with what you have now.

He is today recognised as the Father of Africa Internet due to his immense contribution to the development of the Internet in Africa.

He earned a B.A. in engineering science from Dartmouth College in 1972, and after continuing his education, S.U.N.Y. at Stony Brook awarded him a Ph.D. in computer science in distributed systems in 1977.

He was actively involved in the world of work from 1977 until 1992 in the US. When he returned to Ghana in 1992, he established Network Computer Systems, which was Ghana’s first ISP, in 1993, marking the beginning of Ghana’s journey toward internet connectivity.

But in 1977, through his efforts, the Computer Science department at the University of Cape Coast was born.

As part of his enviable recognition, in December 2007, the Internet Society’s prestigious Jonathan Postel Service Award was bestowed on him for his work, which pioneered and advanced the Internet in Africa. In 2013, he was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame for his pioneering role in the development of the Internet in Africa.

How the internet came to Ghana through Prof. Nii Quaynor

He championed the registration of the first domain name in Ghana in 1993. The domain was GH.COM. A company by the name of Network Computer Systems (NCS) registered it in 1993. A domain is simply the user-friendly name of a website. The domain name of the website you are reading this on is Ghanaeducation.

After securing the domain, they looked for ways to go online and serve the internet. With support from Pipex, the NCS managed to start a commercial service in Ghana. The method used to connect to the internet was the dial-up IP to Pipex performed periodically using a DEC station 5000 model 25 with Morningstar PPP software.

Over time, there was a need to expand the internet services offered in Ghana, but there were several challenges, the major one being a lack of adequate or sufficient DELs. This prevents the NCS from providing internal services to those who subscribe to its dial-in lines.

By October 1994, telephone services had begun to expand through the efforts of Ghana Telecom. This move by Ghana Telecom led to the addition of 15,000 lines to Accra exchanges.

In January 1995, an application for a top-level domain by NCS was approved, which came with its own pressure as more and more Ghanaians wanted to access the world wide web in the cities of Accra and Kumasi.

To ensure internet services are available, there was a need to acquire two workstations from a telebit Netblazer with a rack of U.S. robotics modems.

In all, the two disc capacities were just 6 GB, which had a memory capacity of 48 megabytes each. Can you imagine? This was less than 5 megabytes and far away from 1 gig for a whole nation, but this improved internet service in Ghana in January gave NCS the semblance of a budding Internet service provider.

By August, Ghana was ready to be recognised as Africa’s newest internet hub with full Internet connectivity over a leased line in sub-Saharan Africa. The success of Ghana’s connectivity to the internet is credited to the enviable efforts of Nii Quaynor and his strong technical team, composed of William Tevie, Joseph Annan, Andy Bulley, and others in NCS. NCS is an information technology company providing a variety of services in Ghana.

Prof. Nii Quaynor is the convener of AfNOG, a network technology transfer institution since 2000, and the founding chairman of AFRINIC, the African numbers registry.

Professor Nii Quaynor is undeniably a great man, and we must always thank God for his life, vision, and power of foresight that brought us the internet in the first place. Just like the Chines and Janapenes gradually improved their brand of cars, he and his teams gradually laid the key cornerstones for the amazing internet services we enjoy today in Ghana.