Holistic ICT for EcoLiving

The Kofi Annan Center of Excellence in ICT (ATI-KACE) on the 17th of July, 2008 in partnership with the mPedigree Network held a Technology Transformation Seminar under the theme: World-Class Innovation Made in Ghana.

OVF Ghana’s Kafui Prebbie as the moderator set the tone for the event by saying that Ghana  “Must Innovate or We will Die.”

Except from Kafui’s speech:

I am proud of the diversity of this remarkable audience.  To name a few of the stakeholders represented here, we have representatives from the Chamber of Commerce, representing the private sector; from GTZ, the EU, USAID, IFC, UNIDO, and DFID, all representing multilateral and development partners; from Government ministries; and from the highest echelons of the consulting, entrepreneurial and technical communities of Ghana and West Africa. The signal being sent out can therefore not be ignored: the issues of technological advancement, ICT development and of innovation as a driver of economic growth are national and critical in character, and receive attention across every stratum of our society.

The reason for this strong sense of stakeholder commitment is made evident by the spectacular projects we are about to hear about this afternoon. These are neither dreams nor utopian fantasies. They are operational, fully developed, innovations already impacting on various aspects of our economic life here in Ghana. With equal force, they hoist a vision of the near-future in which Ghanaian excellence will advance to the global stage, as part and parcel of the quest to move our beloved country from its current status as a third world country to a first world one. In a fiercely competitive international marketplace, this vision is not one of idealism, but one of deep, practical, essence. We must Innovate or we WILL DIE!

Clearly, the purpose and importance of this event is not to exhaustively analyse and dissect every aspect of these projects or, perhaps even more crucially, the insights into innovation in Ghana they yield. The objective is to kindle a national debate. It is to project into the public consciousness the need to engage in a deep and wide ranging consciousness about national advancement and about how technology could serve both as a tool and a backdrop of that process of national advancement. For that reason, guests should not worry so much that the pressures of time will not permit a full discussion of the many fascinating issues that will be raised by these presentations. This is merely the beginning of a conversation that hopefully should ripple across our nation; in the corridors of decision-making; in our workplaces, mosques and churches; and in the streets of our towns, cities and hamlets. It is this debate that we shall soon begin here.

Bright B. Simons of the mPedigree Network and Sarata Adams of the Kofi Annan Center for Excellence in ICT, coordinators of the event, sought to ignite a national debate about innovation and excellence in Ghana.

In a highly competitive global marketplace, one of the challenges facing Ghana is to produce a high enough level of innovation to enable the transition from a third-world country to a medium-income one by 2015. Some even go so far as to ask whether Ghana actually can become a first-world country – the first African country to achieve such a feat – within our lifetimes.

The seminar was conducted around three case studies selected to frame the theme and were identified for their practicality, viability and growth potential, as well as for their prospects of attaining Global recognition as pacesetting innovations. Each one of them is a fully functional system past prototype stage.

• mPedigree has made a name for itself pioneering a ICT system to combat the fake drugs epidemic in West Africa. My heart’s in Accra’s post “Using mobile to fight pharma fakes” talks about mPedigree work and the fake drugs issues. Mr. Ashifi Gogo of mPedigree spoke about the public-private organisation’ s drug authentication system dubbed 1393. West Africa, where mPedigree is focusing its attention, is struggling with fake drug scams. Over 50,000 people in Niger were inoculated with fake meningitis vaccine in 1995 leading to thousands of fatalities. The WHO believes that 25% of drugs sold in the region are fake. With the support of the four main GSM telecom operators in Ghana, it has implemented a uniform platform with one 4-digit access number for use by industry and the trade. Manufacturers who are convinced of the need are provided with special one-time codes for embossment on each product pack. Consumers at the point of purchase “text” these codes, at no cost, to the universal number to receive instant feedback from an automated register whether the product is genuine or not. It hopes to expand this program to other countries in Africa and eventually using existing GSM infrastructures (see mPedigree’s profile at MobileActive).
• Mr. Kobina Jackson of Omatek Computers Ltd. talked about his company’s business model – noting that his company is Africa’s number one homegrown personal computer brand. While being a premium Partner for Compaq, Senior Partner for IBM, APPLE, MICROSOFT, etc, Omatek prides itself most on having laid the foundation for the emergence of a unified electronic industry in this part of the world covering components, assembly, value-added services and brand development.
• Mr. Herman Chinery Hesse, Chairman of Softtribe, talked about his new company, BSL International. Its MX platform, an SMS-driven tele-commerce & micropayments infrastructure is serving poor people in rural areas who currently have no access to facilities to send or receive remote payments. Unlike some other tele-commerce platforms, the MX is carrier-agnostic operating independently of the telecommunication operators via various peer-to-peer (P2P) models. The MX application also uses a innovative trading model, the Nii Tettay Protocol, to coordinate purchase and delivery of goods in and from environments where comprehensive physical and financial services have been unavailable to the masses, in a manner designed to enhance trade and enable efficient mobile phone and Internet payments for African goods, even by people without bank accounts.

An open forum followed the presentations where submissions were made by partcipants who ranged from CEOs of technology companies to Government officials.

• Mr. Desmond Boateng, an Assistant Director of the Ministry of Communications informed the
  gathering that it is because of government’s wish to see increased innovation that it is promoting the concept of Technology Parks.
• Dr. Robert Woode, a crusading engineer, joined the call for a concerted national agenda towards technological self-sufficiency.
• Mr. Seth Adjei-Baah, Vice President of the Ghana National Chamber of Mines & Industry, pledged the readiness of private sector financiers to support innovators and entrepreneurs in Ghana.
• The program closed at 5pm, with submissions by Dorothy Gordon, Director General of the AITI-KACE, and Professor Owusu Bennoah, for more of such forums to highlight Ghanaian innovation.

Downloadables related to the event:

• Event Program (Doc)
• Kafui’s speech (Doc)
• ATI KACE Event Backgrounder (Doc)
• You see the official PR release here (which is the original source of this posting) (HTML)