The Ghana-India Kofi Annan ICT Centre of excellence is to collaborate with the Sunyani Technical University to set up drones assembling centre in Sunyani to facilitate agricultural activities.
To this end, the Centre has opened two additional secretariats in Sunyani and Bolgatanga as part of plans to bring its services closer to people.
This came to light when the Director-General of the Kofi Annan ICT Centre, Kwasi Adu Gyan paid a courtesy call on the Vice-Chancellor of the Sunyani Technical University, Prof. Ing. Kwadwo Adinkrah-Appiah in his office.
It was to explore possible ways of partnering in the area of ICT to facilitate not only teaching and learning but also using ICT to solve some of the pertinent socio-economic issues confronting society.
Pilot stage
“We intend to pilot two programmes – assembling drones and programming them for agricultural purposes. We know that in our agric sector, sometimes we are caught in between before we begin to take action. Look at the fall army worms that invaded our farmlands so we want to be proactive so that when such things re-occur in future we could deal with it effectively using modern technology”, Mr. Adu Gyan said.
“When I assumed my current position, I saw the need to have two more Centres – one in Sunyani to take care of the middle belt and one in Bolgatanga to cater for the northern sector.”
“What is unique about the centre in Sunyani is that besides the capacity building, we set it up as a centre that is going to develop work in the area of Internet of Things (IoTs) – exponential technology – to exploit that arena so we look at that.”
“And if we’re talking about exponential technology or IoTs, definitely smart things, the best institution to collaborate here in Sunyani is the Sunyani Technical University.”
He said the Ghana-India Kofi Annan ICT Centre has in recent times been focusing more on capacity building and training “and so we’ve become the training hub where people who have attained degrees in computer science engineering or even people who have no idea of computer science or have some slightest idea, or people who might have done other programmes – either literature, psychology or philosophy but for some reasons want to move to ICT.”
“So we are set up to develop the professionalism that people need to carry out activities in ICT and as you are all aware, technology is changing very fast and there is the need for us to also move very fast.”
Timely intervention
The Vice-Chancellor of the university, Prof. Ing. Kwadwo Adinkrah-Appiah described his visit and the establishment of the Sunyani Centre as timely because of the enormous benefits students and lecturers of the university stand to gain from it.
According to him, the university had already begun moves to establish a drones assembling facility at the university to “propel agriculture” and so it would collaborate with the centre to further advance that course.
The Pro-Vice Chancellor, Dr. Justice Solomon Korantwi-Barimah; the Registrar, Mr. Samuel Ankama Obour and Dr. Jones Lewis Arthur, the Director of the International Relations and Institutional Linkage Directorate of STU as well as some other staff of the university were present at the meeting.
Centre of excellence
The Ghana - India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT is Ghana’s first Advanced Information Technology Institute. Founded in 2003, AITI-KACE is a world-class research facility with the focus on innovating products and services for individual and institutional advancement.
The Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT (AITI-KACE) was established in 2003 through a partnership between Government of Ghana and the Government of India. It is Ghana’s first Advanced Information Technology Institute charged with the task of stimulating growth in the ICT Sector in ECOWAS.
