Just a few steps from the place where the famous Ghanaian Star beer is brewed and bottled, a new institute for higher education in ICT just opened in Kumasi, the second largest city in Ghana.
The institute bears the name of the celebrated Asantehene, king of this region, and is officially named The Osei Tutu II Institute for Advanced ICT Studies, but it is usually referred to as The Institute. The letters ICT in the school’s name are said to be an acronym, not only for Information and Communication Technology, but also for Innovation, Cooperation, Thinking. The Institute was officially inaugurated by the Ghanaian Minister of Trade, Mr. Joe Baidoo-Ansah, in behalf of the President of Ghana, John Kufuor. Tom de Man, president of Heineken for Africa and the Middle East, an official from the Dutch Embassy, and the Managing Director of Ghana Guinness Breweries Limited were among the special guests who attended the opening ceremony of The Institute.
This is the first school in Ghana to teach ICT at MSc level. The very first batch of seventeen students started here last August. If these students succeed in all the tough examinations, they will obtain their Master’s degree in 2009. They will be taught according to the newest insights in information and communication technologies, computer science, entrepreneurship and management.
The institute was designed and created by one man, the Dutch professor Maarten Looijen, who is now rector. The initiative for this school came from Heineken International. The sponsors now are Ghana Guinness Breweries, Diageo, Coca Cola, Unilever and Barclays. The Dutch government gives a substantial financial support.
Ghana is taking off economically. The World Bank reported an economic growth in Ghana of 6 % for the last year. Ghana is now one of the best-performing economies in western Africa. When you visit e.g. Accra and Kumasi, you can see numerous new hotels, businesses, shopping malls, conference centers. Many, many new residences are being built, all over the country. ICT is in everybody’s minds. Mobile telephony expands every year. One out of four Ghanaians owns a mobile telephone nowadays. There are internet cafes all over the country. The road infrastructure is in good shape. You can drive on asphalt from Accra to the far north, and even cross the border to neighboring Burkina Faso.
E-business, semantic web, internet technology, are just a few of the subjects taught at the Institute by professors from Holland, South-Africa, Italy, Bulgaria. Although internet in Ghana is still of very low-bandwidth capacity, due to monopolies and an unregulated telecom market, new technologies are desperately needed to support economic growth. Ghana will need many, many more graduates in ICT than this institute can deliver each year. Most computer businesses are now run by foreigners, entrepreneurs from India, China or Europe. Skilled Ghanaian network specialists and system administrators can be found, but Ghanaians as Chief Information Officers (CIOs) are still hard to find.
This institute is a good first step to enhance Ghanaian education in ICT. I hope many ICT professionals will be delivered to African society by this institute. And let these professionals reinvest their capacities into African economy. I wish there were ten institutes like this in Ghana!
Four students at The Institute
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