Ghana's efforts at transforming itself from a third-world country into a middle income economy by 2015 is steadily gaining momentum. This is evidenced by the presence of some companies in Ghana’s Information Technology (IT) sector, notably Omatek Computers Limited, MPedigree and BSL International, who are blazing the trail to catapult Ghana into a pacesetter in technology innovation. The innovations, which are past prototype stages, have gone into fully functional stages necessitating a national debate about innovation and excellence in Ghana in the context of a highly-competitive global marketplace and challenges confronting it as it strives to achieve this feat in the short to medium term. Also, solutions, strategies and insights are thus being sought from stakeholders from all sectors of the Ghanaian society – ranging from multilateral institutions to the leadership of the private sector. The Kofi Annan Centre for Excellence in ICT and MPedigree Network, on Thursday set the ball rolling by jointly organising a technology transformation seminar in Accra. Prof Owusu Bennoah, Director-General of the Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research, in a speech, said the time has come for technologies and innovations by Ghanaians to be polished. Furthermore, he said the establishment of science parks and incubator laboratories could spin off more companies as Ghana moves toward technology innovation. He therefore called for the standardization of the processes required in manufacturing Ghanaian technology products and patenting these accordingly. Kobina Jackson, Country Manager of Omatek Computers, in a presentation, said his outfit would soon go into the manufacturing of made-in-Ghana computers as it has acquired the expertise to do so. Omatek Computers produces Africa’s number one homegrown personal computer brand while being a premium partner for Compaq, senior partner for IBM, Apple, Microsoft and other famous computer brands manufacturers. Herman Chinery-Hesse, Chairman of Softribe Limited and CEO of BSL International, also mentioned successes chalked by his company in developing the MX platform. It is an SMS driven tele-commerce and micropayments infrastructure that will serve poor people in the rural areas who currently have no access to facilitate, send or receive remote payments. Unlike some other tele-commerce platforms, the MX is carrier-agnostic as it can operate independently of the telecommunication operators via various peer-to-peer models. The MX application also uses a new trading model, ‘Nii Tettey Protocol,’ to coordinate the purchase and delivery of goods in and from environments where comprehensive physical and financial services have been unavailable to the masses. Ashifi Gogo, a technology consultant with MPedigree, commenting on his company’s achievements, said with the support of its four main telecommunications operators in Ghana, his outfit has implemented a uniform platform with one 4-digit access number for use by industry and trade. “Manufacturers who are convinced of the need are provided with special one-time codes for embossment on each product pack. Consumers at the point of purchase “text” these codes at no cost, to the universal number to receive instant feedback from an automated register to determine whether the product is genuine or not. “Through the same platform, it is proposed that regulators and actors in the public health supply chain system should be electronically networked to tackle some of the root causes of counterfeiting and other trade abuses, while manufacturers should be served with an integrated structure for novel mobile marketing activities.” In addition to enhancing trade and enabling efficient mobile phone and internet payments for African goods - even by people without bank accounts, the platform and the trading model, among others, will work well for the micro-finance industry and other industry faced with the challenge of collecting low-value payments from cash-based economies. Source: Daily Guide