The Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT (AITI-KACE) as a means to support ICT education in Ghanaian schools has begun collaborative engagements with the Ghana National Association of ICT Teachers (GNAIT). As part of the on-going process, the centre hosted members of GNAIT to present to them NYANSAPO, Ghana's first indigenous operating system, developed by AITI-KACE.

Director-General of AITI-KACE, Kwasi Adu Gyan made a presentation on top technology trends for the year 2020. He emphasised how technology trends are influencing student projects and project selection.

He further urged the audience to keep their eyes on the future while he elaborated on the use of Artificial Intelligence, IoT, Virtual Reality, Edge computing, BlockChain and Machine Learning.

The audience who were mainly members of the GNAIT were told about the advantages that the operating system possessed over its competitors in terms of security, convenience, and affordability among others. The session focused mainly on EDUNOS, the education variant of the Nyansapo Operating System (NOS), which was designed specially to ease the teaching and learning process and make it more practical and effective.

It was explained by the presenters - who were staff of AITI-KACE - that EDUNOS is a much-needed solution to the often inconvenient reliance on proprietary software that burdened many schools with relatively expensive license acquisitions and updates.

Members of the audience when it was their turn, also put their questions and suggestions across, while also expressing admiration and support for the software. They were assured by the presenters that suggestions such as having Ghanaian local languages, an application store and more ICT-oriented learning applications as part of the operating system will be taken on board for consideration for updates to the software.

The National President of GNAIT James K. Ackon, in a brief interview after the event, expressed optimism and satisfaction with the software.

In his words, “the operating system is good by the features it presents and can help basic schools and senior high schools”. Programmes Manager of GNAIT and CEO of Nodes 3 World Technologies, Isaac K. Owusu also added that the software could “go international” even though it has an indigenous appeal.

The two entities expressed optimism about working together on more projects going forward. Some of these include collaboration in organising coding competitions and quizzes for students and training for some ICT teachers in certain well-crafted courses by AITI-KACE.

After the event, all of the teachers present made sure they had the operating system installed on their laptops before they left the venue as they couldn’t wait to use the first operating system made in Ghana.