Kofi Annan ICT Centre Ready to Support Gov’t Industrialization Programme

To meet the demand areas of the government’s strategic focus in developing an industrialization programme, the Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT (AITI-KACE) has observed significant demands in Research and Innovation to support such a meritorious programme, and is therefore positioning itself to offer such support to the private sector.

According to the Director General of the Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT, Mr. Kwasi Adu-Gyan, one of the demand areas of the industrialization programme is computer aided manufacturing, therefore it was prudent for the centre to position itself to meet those demands.

Mr. Adu-Gyan indicated that the Kofi Annan ICT Centre has observed an ever-increasing demand in corporate and enterprises requiring resources and competencies in using ICT as an operational tool for their businesses.

He continued that such demand ranges from corporate capacity development platforms to human and institutional capacity development (HICD) services business application suites, and ERPs among others. The centre intend to leverage on its expertise to assist enterprises acquire and deploy such solutions and support them through the adoption process and the relevant post-adoption support.

“Where necessary, we will also help them design and develop requisite connectivity infrastructure and hosting systems as well as service management systems.” He added.

According to the Director General an observation in an increase in private sector demand for Research and Innovation collaboration especially in exponential technologies where AITI-KACE is identified to have significant knowledge and experience has been made, and those collaborations are expected to generate new products and services that will be commercialized by the private sector with a revenue sharing arrangement for the centre.

“It may also constitute a funded research with a specific subject of interest to the stakeholders.” He added.

On Exponential Technologies, Mr. Adu-Gyan explained that the centre monitors and identifies these technologies that are trending and serves as an advocate and a catalyst for its introduction and development in Ghana.

The Director General disclosed some of the exponential technologies where the center is developing capacities in as; mobile computing, cloud computing, data analytics, artificial intelligence, 3D printing, robotics, HPC and Internet of everything, adding that these exponential technologies have a generational cycle of about 5 to 10 years.

He explained further that every 5 to 10 years, new exponential technologies emerge that shape the markets and our lifestyle, so the center intends to continue engaging in Research and Innovations with trending exponential technologies to help develop new technology ecosystems cyclically and sustain continuous innovation.

Mr. Adu-Gyan reiterated that one of the exponential technologies that is of immediate focus is Internet of Everything and the center intends to develop Research and Innovation capabilities in the End-To-End value chain of Internet of Everything, which will include but not limited to Embedded and Sensor systems development, Cloud computing technology development and Mobile Computing technology development.