The Minister for Communications, Digital Technology and Innovations has reaffirmed the critical role of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in driving Ghana’s National Artificial Intelligence (AI) agenda, describing the university as a key pivot between policy and implementation.
According to the Minister, the Ministry’s partnership with KNUST is foundational to the country’s 10-year National AI Strategy, which was recently launched by President John Dramani Mahama in April this year.
He made this known during an official visit to KNUST, where he engaged management and faculty of the university on deepening collaboration for the implementation phase of the national AI strategy.
The Minister disclosed that when he assumed office, one of the first persons he engaged was Professor Jerry John Kponyo, Head of the Responsible AI Lab at KNUST, relative to the development of the country’s AI strategy.
“Where the world sits today, AI is critical for everything that we have to do. And we decided that we needed to quickly put out a national AI strategy that will govern our next 10 years,” he stated.
He noted that government took a deliberate decision that the national AI strategy should not be written by bureaucrats, but by academia and practitioners. Consequently, Professor Kponyo led the drafting process, co-chaired by practitioner Darlene Tinakogo.
“We’re grateful to KNUST for giving him to us. President Mahama launched that strategy in April of this year. We’ve moved into the implementation phase,” the Minister said.
The Minister revealed that as part of President Mahama’s recent investment tour to the United Kingdom, a £6.5 million grant sponsorship was signed for technological partnerships between Ghanaian and UK educational institutions, with KNUST as a beneficiary.
He said the Ministry insisted that the grant should not go to the Ministry or any government agency, but directly to educational institutions to foster true academic and technological collaboration.
He added that he recently hosted the British High Commissioner to discuss ongoing partnerships between KNUST and some universities in the U.K., and was informed that implementation work is already underway.
While the Ministry and government will provide policy direction, the Minister stressed that the real impetus for scaling up AI adoption and bridging the digital gap must come from academia.
“I have identified one lecturer, one professor in a number of our universities to lead this drive, especially when it comes to our national language model,” he noted.
He warned that if care is not taken, Artificial Intelligence could lead to the extinction of indigenous African languages and create a big divide between technology and the people.
KNUST To Lead Development Of Twi Language Model
The Minister emphasized the need to build Ghana’s own national language models and said KNUST, given its unique position within Asanteman, should lead in the development of the language model for Twi.
He argued that building Ghana’s language models cannot come from Rome, Europe or the United States, because local dialects carry tonal inflections and contextual meanings that only local academics and traditional authorities can accurately interpret.
Citing an example, he explained that in his local Ga/Dangme dialect, the same word “Nu” can mean man, water, or drink, depending on the inflection – a nuance a European developer would not be able to capture.
He said government believes in transferring knowledge to local academics to lead the country’s own development.
AI Must Serve Farmers, Health Sector Through Local Languages
The Minister said AI must be deployed to serve critical sectors like agriculture and health in indigenous languages.
“Many solutions exist for precision farming, remote weather sensing and advanced crop disease detection, but they are not in our indigenous languages. We need to create voice interfaces in our local languages to put this technology in the hands of our farmers,” he said.
On health, he said the newly announced 5G spectrum, expected to be fully beneficial from next year, should be leveraged for telemedicine, enabling a gynaecologist at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital to offer medical services to a pregnant woman in a remote community.
“These are the things we are looking to do. And I believe that KNUST stands at that key pivot between transforming policy into real action as our nation’s premier technology institution,” he added.
The Minister noted that while the first two years of his tenure have largely focused on policy formulation and frameworks, the next two years will be dedicated to implementation, which will see a stronger partnership with KNUST.
“You will see a lot more of me as we move now into implementation,” he told the Vice-Chancellor and his team.
The partnership, he said, will be most visible in the President’s flagship One Million Coders programme, which aims to build the needed human capital for the AI ecosystem.
He disclosed that following an engagement three weeks ago where President Mahama asked him and the Minister for Trade to undertake a crash programme at Harvard, the One Million Coders programme was reworked with a team of global experts.
As part of the redesign, the Ministry is restructuring its engagement with KNUST from focusing on Level 100 students to Level 300 and 400 students.
“If a Level 100 completes the programme today and decides not to do anything between Level 200 and 400, by the time they are leaving the university, there is a gap between training and implementation. But if we focus on our Level 400s and 300s, then we are preparing them for the world of work,” he explained.
He said the Ministry is working with a team from Harvard to conduct a skills gap analysis, so that programmes offered on campus will be tailored to the actual skills needed in the world of work.
Ministry To Provide 2,500 Laptops To KNUST
To support the programme, the Minister announced that the Ministry, which had previously provided 500 laptops for 10 training centres on campus, will add an additional 2,000 laptops to bring the total to 2,500 laptops, translating into 25 learning centres across the KNUST campus.
This, he said, will enable the university to roll out the One Million Coders programme to as many Level 300 and 400 students as possible, with further support to be extended as the programme progresses.
