Accra, July 17, GNA - Mr Yoofi Grant, the Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC), has urged innovators to create inventions that would solve Africa's problems in order to attract government's support and investors.
He said innovations should be critical for the African market and also have the capacity to thrive as a profitable venture.
Mr Grant raised these concerns when addressing the media on the sidelines of the 2017 Innovation Prize for Africa (IPA) in Accra on Monday.
He said for Africa to rub shoulders with other continents in terms of innovation, it would have to revise its educational structure.
He said the continent needed the kind of education that would give the people the power to create and make more wealth.
Mr Grant said the country needed innovators who would create something groundbreaking and not take someone's idea and slightly change it.
'It must be innovative, not just taking somebody's idea and changing it and say it is good for us,' he said.
Mr Grant, however, noted that there were a lot of brilliant innovators in Ghana and it, therefore, behoved on the Government to create conducive environment to embrace them.
'The responsibility is on the Government to make sure that we can actually embrace a lot of these innovations which are usually in the informal sector and, therefore, do not get the attention of the Government,' he noted.
The sixth edition of the IPA competition is on the theme: 'African Innovation: Investing in Prosperity.'
The event is being organised by the African Innovation Foundation (AIF), in partnership with the Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation, Ghana Investment Promotion Centre and Ghana at 60 Secretariat.
It aims at strengthening African innovation ecosystems through competition.
The competition had been successful in Ethiopia (2012), South Africa (2013), Nigeria (2014), Morocco (2015) and Botswana (2016).
GNA
By Godwill Arthur-Mensah/ Jonas Danquah, GNA
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