The Annual Engineering Conference held under the auspices of the School of Engineering Sciences of the University of Ghana and Industry player, Reroy Cables, have demanded targeted collaboration between industry and academia to produce top-class research in the area of engineering and sciences to solve the myriad of problems facing Ghana.
It marks the 20th anniversary of the establishment of the School of Engineering Sciences.
Held on the theme ‘Sustainable Innovative Technologies for Development’, stakeholders noted a more sustainable approach to dealing with the issue would be for government to commit more by making use of research works produced by scientists and engineers.
Presenting a paper on what has worked best for the United Kingdom (UK) and what Ghana can learn from, a Professor from the Warwick Manufacturing Group of the University of Warwick, Robin Clark, said the best technologies in the UK came as a result of sound policy framework backed by research with government incentivising these researches to produce best outcomes.
“It is time to reflect and think about what we want our communities and countries to look like in future.
“What we are trying to achieve in the UK is that we want a conversation between the universities and industries to know what we want for ourselves. If you look at the most economies, Small and Medium Scale Enterprises make up the biggest part of the economy and we have to factor them in the policy framework.”
Touching on the essence of the conference, the Dean of the School of Engineering Sciences, Professor Elsie Effah Kaufmann, said the idea to have an engineering conference was mooted more than 10 years ago because of the urgent need to confront the challenges in Ghana.
“It’s a dream come true because we wanted a platform to showcase what we have achieved so far. Coming up with new ideas and new order is what we need. We want government to show more commitment with some of the problems we have identified,” she noted.
Provost of the College of Basic and Applied Sciences (CBAS) Prof. Boateng Onwona-Agyeman said the European Union policy for African countries to have 1 percent of Gross Domestic Products committed to research is what must engage the government’s attention.
“As we all know we don’t have a national research fund and is something that we need to push for. All the technologies that are coming out did not just happen by chance, it’s as a result of research. We don’t have to wait for technology to develop then we catch up, we have to be part of it.”
Several research works were presented as part of the annual conference.
These include: Environmental conditions monitoring systems, medicine and transportation.