By Kodjo Adams, GNA
Accra, Oct. 3, GNA – Mr Emmanuel Ofori, the Director of Innovation, Ministry of Communications, Digital Technology and Innovation, has called on Africa to prioritise research in its development agenda to move from being a consumer of technology to becoming a producer of solutions.
He said countries that had successfully developed their economies invested significantly in research and development, and that Africa could not achieve sustainable economic growth without placing greater emphasis on research.
“If you do not invest in research, you will forever become a consumer, and that is what we are. We are a consuming continent,” he said.
Mr Ofori said this at a research symposium in Accra on Wednesday on the theme: “Indigenous Research Renaissance—From Inquiry to Impact.”
The Young Africans Research Academy (YARA) organised the programme, to mark the culmination of YARA’s inaugural 12-month STEM Fellowship.
It brought together leaders from academia, research institutions, policy, technology, and industry to engage with emerging research led by young African scholars.
Africa’s dependence on technologies and solutions developed elsewhere meant that the continent remained largely a customer of other economies, while those economies continued to profit from African markets, Mr Ofori said.
“We must get into the arena where we can also spend some money on research and development,” he added.
He noted that AI presented significant opportunities for Africa but cautioned that the continent needed to develop and use its own data to train AI systems to accurately reflect African languages, cultures, and ways of communication.
Using the translation of local languages as an example, he observed that some AI-generated translations did not sound natural because the systems lacked sufficient local data.
He said researchers could make use of publicly available data, including recorded speeches and other materials, to train AI systems to better understand and reproduce the nuances of local languages.
Mr Ofori insisted that research should go beyond academic publications and focus on developing practical solutions that could generate economic value.
“Research must make money. Your effort does not end at the book. It ends as a solution, and that’s what makes your money,” he said.
He urged researchers to undertake market and environmental scans before developing solutions to determine whether similar products already existed and, if so, identify areas where they could add value.
Mr Ofori encouraged young researchers to be open to partnerships and investment, saying that accepting investment in exchange for a share of a commercially successful solution could help move innovations from the research stage to the market.
Researchers, he noted, should recognise that their primary role was to develop solutions, while investors and other partners could help take those solutions through commercialization.
Mr Isaac Aboah, Founder and Executive Director of YARA, said the Academy was established to identify and train some of Africa’s brightest young minds in research principles and equip them to tackle pressing challenges facing the continent.
“We believe that problems can be solved if we think hard about them. And one of the ways to do that is through science,” he said.
He observed that scientific research provided a structured way of breaking down societal challenges into questions and testable hypotheses capable of producing practical solutions.
Mr Aboah said Africa needed to build an evidence-driven economy in which research informs policy, professional practice, commercialisation, industry, and broader societal development.
He said YARA currently focused its research activities on three major areas: artificial intelligence, public health, and climate change.
Mr Perry Nelson, Country Manager and Research Lead of Google Ghana, said Africans must generate and maintain their own datasets because some information about African people, languages, environments, and behaviours were unlikely to be collected elsewhere.
He cited African languages as an example, stressing that systems designed to understand local languages and dialects required locally generated data.
The symposium provided a platform for 10 Fellows of YARA to present their work through oral presentations and poster exhibitions across artificial intelligence, public health, robotics, agriculture, molecular biology, climate science, and computational research.
GNA
Edited by Agnes Boye-Doe
Reporter: Kodjo Adams
Email: [email protected]