Private legal practitioner Ace Anan Ankomah has called on the government to fully support the Ghana Research and Industry Collaborative (GRIC) to foster innovation and tackle national challenges.
Speaking at the 22nd congregation of the Methodist University of Ghana in Accra on Saturday, Ankomah urged the government to take a proactive role in establishing incubator hubs, particularly in science, technology, and engineering, on university campuses.
These hubs would bring together research students, industry stakeholders, and universities to explore ways to turn research into tangible solutions for the country.
GRIC is a national initiative aimed at bridging the gap between researchers and industry players, fostering collaboration and innovation.
It involves universities, applied research institutions, businesses, government bodies, and international partners, with the goals of identifying industry research needs, mobilizing research outputs, supporting development, and facilitating policy discussions and learning workshops.
Ankomah emphasized the importance of ensuring proper patenting of inventions and safeguarding intellectual property rights to protect the work of researchers and innovators.
“This could also secure lifelong work for several students, and make the STEM study more and more attractive to students,” he added.
While he said it may be okay to purchase and import solutions from elsewhere, the private legal practitioner emphasised the need for Ghana to consider whether what was discovered, evolved, and developed in the country may be a cheaper, easier, and better fit.
“Yes, we must not ‘re-invent the wheel.’ But our history shows that many imported ‘wheels’ have not been the right size or fit. As T. S. Eliot wrote in his ‘Murder in The Cathedral,’ ‘Sever the cord, shed the scale. Only the fool, fixed in his folly, may think he can turn the wheel on which he turns.’ Ladies and Gentlemen, maybe our salvation lies in inventing our own wheels. We have to THINK our way through and out of our national problems. And there is no place for better, clearer, independent thinking than our universities.”
“The Government must devote more resources towards that thinking process and channel them to solving our problems. May the day soon come when our national budgets and government policies (unlike some fenced fuselage carcasses of fighter jets) would be subjected to robust and independent scrutiny and analyses by the relevant faculties and departments of our universities, to make them better. If we cannot think our way through and out of our problems, then let’s shut the country down; and then may the last person to leave, remember to turn the lights off…, dumsor permitting,” Ankomah further stated.
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