By Joyce Gyekye
As part of the government’s effort at driving the country’s socioeconomic development with science, technology and innovation in the next decade, industry will be positioned to uptake research outputs. To achieve this, stakeholders have met in Accra at a roundtable to collaborate to make the decade of research innovation attainable.
Speakers acknowledged the importance of research and the institutions leading the drive but questioned the relevance of research when they are not driven by industry.
At the event, the Chief Executive Officer of the Association of Ghana Industries, Seth Twum Akwaboah called on research Institutions and Universities to know the problems of industry and produce products tailored towards that. He said, “If industry cannot commercialize a product and operate a sustainable project out of it, industry will not implement it.”
He acknowledged the role of industry to fund research as pertains in developed countries but said the domination of industry by small scale enterprises who are themselves struggling to pay workers and utility bills, makes it difficult to fund research.
”It’s important that industry is supported, encouraged to create such funds and this can be driven by government policy through tax reliefs”, according to Mr. Twum Akoaboah.
The Chief Executive Officer of the Private Enterprise Foundation, Nana Osei Bonsu called for the strengthening of the country’s legal regime regarding Intellectual Property Rights to protect key products that have been developed. This he said ”would allow businesses who have the resources to finance research be able to recoup their investment”.
The Deputy Director General for the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, CSIR, Professor Marian Dorcas Quain said overreliance on donor funding makes the council dance to the tune of donors. She called for a policy that will drive most of their research outputs, with particular reference to the Pozzolana cement which can withstand high temperature, resistance to water absorption and sulphate resistance among others but not meeting demand due to lack of investment.
The Special Assistant to the Minister of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation, Oliver Boachie said the stakeholder’s collaboration is to develop a master plan to address the challenges that have held the country back regarding science and socio-economic development.
This is contained in a 10-year master plan developed by the Ministry that aims at using technology and innovation in driving socio-economic development. Mr. Boachie mentioned two collaborative programmes with the Republic of Korea with one being: Industry- University Research, IUR meetings.
He said ‘ ‘with IUR, our public research institutions will try and de-emphasize the pursuit of just basic research and ensure we do research that is relevant to address the basic needs of our people”.
The roundtable was convened with funding from Research and Innovation Systems for Africa, RISA, which aims at supporting and strengthening Research and Innovation systems in six African countries including Ghana. The Programme in the country is being implemented by Haritors Lab; a research centre and innovation service hub, in partnership with the Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation.