By Florence Afriyie Mensah
Kumasi, Sept 19, GNA – Ghana is set to strengthen its capacity in light-based science with the launch of the Ghana Photonics and Optics Laboratory (GPOL) at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) on Tuesday 22 September 2026.
The GPOL, being hosted at the Department of Physics, KNUST, is the work of researchers led by Dr Akyana Britwum, Principal Investigator and Scientific Lead, and Dr Michael Kweku Edem Donkor, Technical Lead and Co-Principal Investigator, with the support of international partners.
Its purpose is to build, teach and maintain light-based instruments for health and safety, from devices that authenticate medicines without opening the package, to affordable diagnostic imaging, to sensors that read heavy metals in soil and water in seconds.
Through its partners, it is building the capacity to do the science of photonic instrumentation itself, to build the instruments, to improve what they can do locally, and to point them at questions that matter to Ghanaians and Africans, while training the people who will carry the work forward.
The challenge has been that substandard and falsified medicines circulate in West African markets, with glaucoma and newborn jaundice being caught late where screening and laboratories are far away.
Heavy metals from mining move through soil and water and are found only after the harm is done.
Photonics, the science of using light to measure, image and sense, address each of these, but the instruments have long been imported, expensive, and, when broken, left broken, and the GPOL exists to change that.
The new laboratory will be commissioned during the inaugural NYANSAPƆ Photonics School for Health and Safety, which brings together 38 emerging scientists from six African countries and leading photonics researchers from Africa, Europe and North America.
Unlike a conventional scientific conference, the six-day school places students inside working laboratories.
Participants learn the science behind the instruments and then operate them: technologies used in medical imaging, tissue and blood-flow measurement, chemical analysis and other health and safety applications.
The equipment and expertise established through the programme remain at KNUST, creating a lasting platform for research, training, and regional collaboration.
“Photonics is one of the defining technologies of this century, and there is no reason Ghana should be on the sidelines.
With GPOL and the NYANSAPƆ school, we are establishing the laboratory, the training and the international partnerships that let us as researchers and our students do world-class optics here at home, on problems that matter to Ghana”, Dr. Britwum noted.
Dr Donkor explained that “what sets this school apart is that students do not simply hear about these techniques; they learn the science behind each instrument, operate it themselves, and take the data it produces through to analysis”.
“Photonics is a growing strength for our department and hosting the NYANSAPƆ school places our students shoulder to shoulder with leading researchers from around the world,” Prof. Francis Kofi Ampong, Head of the Department of Physics at KNUST stated.
GNA
Edited by Kwabia Owusu-Mensah/Kenneth Odeng Adade
Reporter: Florence Afriyie Mensah
Email: [email protected]