A GNA Feature by Stephen Asante
Kumasi, Sept. 26, GNA – Creativity, innovativeness and ingenuity come to mind when one thinks of engineering.
As one of the key academic disciplines under Science and Technology education, engineering is considered as the bedrock for realizing the development potential of any society.
Hungarian-American mathematician, aerospace engineer and physicist, Theodore von Karman, sums up this notion in a quote: “Scientists study the world as it is; engineers create the world that has never been.”
Studying how, when, where, and for whom engineers serve is crucial to understanding how engineering work has contributed to the emergence of key dimensions of contemporary life.
Role of Engineers:
Within the Ghanaian context, for instance, engineers have over the years been instrumental in designing and helping to build some key infrastructure, including roads, bridges, dams, sewerage and water supply systems which have been critical to the nation’s development and growth.
Imagine what would have become of our society but for major engineering works such as the Akosombo Dam, which had for many years served as an important source of hydro-power to many homes and industries in the country.
The most modern-day services and products, especially relating to Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) have some element of engineering involved in their conception.
The SMART phone, borne out of engineering works, is fast changing the way things are done globally, or how the bullet train, for instance, had enhanced transportation, to say the least.
Some of the breakthroughs that have occurred in biomedical engineering in the history of humankind such as the X-ray machine, have had significant impact on humanity.
This century-old technology allows medical professionals to see broken bones, dental cavities, and other things inside the human body that need attention.
According to Professor Mark Adom-Asamoah, Provost of the College of Engineering (CoE), Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), “engineers apply the sciences of physics, mathematics and other disciplines to find suitable antidotes to development challenges.”
Engineering Education:
Over the last six decades, Ghana had sought to promote engineering education, taking cognizance of the fact that as a developing nation, the only way to achieve accelerated growth is through critical and innovative thinking.
In considering growth through innovation, certain key factors could not be glossed over-namely, more money for developing knowledge-intensive professions, especially in STEM education areas, the requisite technical and institutional infrastructure, research and development (R&D) investment to create new knowledge.
The creation of new knowledge through engineering education is the drive that invigorates professions and transforms national infrastructure, both technological and institutional.
“STEM education is not only a prelude to engineering, but also to innovation and manufacturing in the 21st Century.
“It is also crucial to fields in all areas of society, including financial, medical and biology sectors,” according to Dr. Saul K. Fenster, President Emeritus of the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT).
The dynamics of global economic integration and advances in technology are presenting complex development challenges that can be addressed only by embracing opportunities for change, especially in the area of engineering education and research.
Sadly, most African countries, including Ghana, seem not to give due recognition to engineering education, and this is partly responsible for the seemingly slow pace of development and technological advancement that the continent currently finds itself in.
Challenges:
In most cases, the budgetary support for engineering training institutions are woefully inadequate, having an impact on the required engineering graduates expected to be churned out on yearly basis, and the requisite research outputs also needed to underpin development in all fields of human endeavour.
Presenting a paper on, ‘Engineering Education, Innovations and Sustainable Development,’ at the annual conference of the Ghana Institution of Engineers, at the KNUST, in Kumasi, recently, Prof. Adom-Asamoah said Ghana produces an average of 6, 500 graduates per year.
“Vietnam, with a population of approximately 97 million, produces over 100,000 engineering graduates each year. Ghana should be doing much more!” He noted.
The statistics for the annual number of engineering graduates are the Russian Federation (454, 436), United States (237, 826), Iran (233, 695), Japan (168, 214), South Korea (147, 858), Indonesia (140, 169), Ukraine (130, 391), Mexico (113, 944), as well as France (104, 746).
In his submission, the College of Engineering Provost said the number of engineering graduates churned out annually in Ghana “is woefully inadequate,” particularly as the nation searched for the critical engineering human resource to spearhead her growth and progress.
KNUST-CoEn and Ghana’s Development:
One Ghanaian institution which has over the years been spearheading the agenda to harness the nation’s development potentials through evidence-based practical approaches and technological innovations is the KNUST-CoE.
Established in 1952, it currently runs programmes in varied engineering fields at the BSc, MSc, MPhil, and PhD level.
The programmes and courses run by the College, according to the authorities, are in line with the vision to develop ‘home-grown’ solutions to the varied socio-economic and technological development deficits, impeding the nation’s sustainable growth.
They encompass areas spanning agriculture, medicine, the built environment, aerospace, automobile, biomedical, civil, chemical, computer and geomatic engineering.
Prof. Adom-Asamoah told the Ghana News Agency (GNA), in an interview on the research activities of the College, that the institution was making strong progress in the use of the flying robot technology to aid the growth of the nation’s agriculture.
According to him, a team of KNUST research scientists and engineers had also developed a home-made drone, which could be deployed to pick weather data, monitor farming activities and environmental degradation.
The device, whose prototype had already been put to test, could also serve other vital purposes such as security and atmospheric research.
“The device had so far been used to monitor the concentration of e-waste at the Agbogbloshie market in Accra,” he told the GNA.
Ghana, he argued, ought to invest massively in building a strong base for drone manufacturing since “we have the potential, technical know-how and the available human resource base in achieving our objectives.”
Price Waterhouse Coopers (PwC) estimates that the global market for commercial application of drone technology is expected to balloon to as much as 127 billion British pounds in the near future, up from the current two (2) billion Bristish pounds.
Other key projects by the College, which prototypes had been developed and being tested over the last two years, include the design, fabrication and test of unmanned remote-controlled agricultural ‘hexacopter’.
The 6.5 kilogramme device, made up of six individual aluminum T-spars joined together at the centre by circular Perspex bolts as fasteners, is capable of performing aerial spraying of agro-chemicals onto vegetable farms in a bid to mechanize farming and ensure safety of farmers in the country.
The main objective is to design and build a light-weight yet strong remotely-controlled electric ‘hexacopter’ capable of carrying about two litres of agro-chemicals on vegetable fields with high endurance and stability to ensure good spraying.
In the textiles industry, the College has also come out with a project dubbed ‘Lorkete’ to help automate the Kente weaving process through an electronically controlled machine, consisting of a number of motors that provide various motions to undertake the weaving process.
According to Prof. Adom-Asamoah, currently, the major drawback of the machine which is being worked on, is the Heddle, adding that, at its current state “it is a single weave loom expected to produce the same textured Kente cloth as provided by the manual Kente machines already available.”
Additionally, the KNUST in partnership with the Technical University of Munich, Germany, has also constructed a solar-powered 4×4 vehicle, which is currently in the testing stage and processes to fine-tune it in order to bring it to standard.
“When completed, it could become the first solar-powered 4×4 vehicle to be manufactured on the African continent,” according to the Provost.
Recommendations:
It is a fact that engineering education can transform Ghana’s development for the better given the needed budgetary allocation and provision of the requisite resources to the training institutions.
“Ghana needs to sharply raise the number of engineers that it produces,” Prof. Adom-Asamoah observes.
Undeniably, engineers have a critical role to play in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), because all the Goals require the creativity and innovation of engineers to be realised.
It is important that industry partners and the training institutions join hands to shift engineering education towards student-centred problem-based learning to bring out creativity and critical thinking in future engineers.
Indeed, the Government and industry have a key role to play in advancing the cause of engineering education.
GNA